222 THE GOSPEL, AND THE SOCIAL CREED OF SCIENCE. 



practice by physicists, chemists, naturalists, physiologists, 

 and economists ; and whose whole method of procedure 

 has been so completely systematized and described in all 

 its parts, and subordinate aids, induction, deduction, 

 hypotheses, observation, experiment, statistics, by posi- 

 tive thinkers of the past and present generation, in 

 particular by Comte, Whewell, Mill, and Bain. This is 

 the method of inquiry which has borne so much fruit in 

 the past three centuries in the explanation of Nature, 

 man, and society, and in the subjection of the powers 

 of Nature to human wants. This inductive method of 

 search after Nature's laws has already given us our 

 whole body of scientific truth, and the resulting mastery 

 over Nature. It is this same method further extended, 

 though still limited to the finding and explaining of facts 

 and laws, that will at length give us a moral science and 

 rules of life suitable to man's real nature and circum- 

 stances in the world, and a science of society which will 

 explain the conditions of social well-being. According 

 to some, we shall even get from the resulting laws and 

 conceptions a new philosophy and a new religion ; but 

 if positive science cannot serve us thus far, it will render 

 the other and more pressingly needed service. 



