206 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



one of which has tended enormously to broaden our 

 view of natural objects and events ; the other to narrow 

 it down and make it more definite, scientifically ac- 

 curate, and precise. The former has tended to sweep 

 away the older landmarks and di\isions as inadequate 

 to afford us a correct \i.ew of nature ; the latter has 

 tended to create new di\'isions and definitions, more in 

 harmony with the lines on which the abstract sciences 

 of physics and chemistry have been developed, and has 

 thus brought the actual objects and events of nature 

 more within the grasp of those exact and mathematical 

 6. methods which those sciences have perfected. The former 



The spirit of . , . , i i ^ i_ 



exploration, has bccu camcd on in the vast workshop or nature her- 

 self by those daring and far-seeing travellers who, with 

 Alexander von Humboldt at theu- head, have attempted 

 to gain a \iew of natui'e on an extensive scale. For the 

 sake of the increase of natural knowledge alone, they 

 visited distant countries where the elemental forces of 

 nature, undisturbed by the inroads of ci\'ilisation, have 

 battled and co-operated to produce the magnificent floras 

 and faunas of the tropics, or where, as in Siberia, the 

 eternal cold has preserved intact the remains of bygone 

 periods. Equipped with the instruments and methods of 

 modern science, they recognised the necessity of studying 

 the actual formation and stratification of rocks, the geo- 

 graphical distribution of organic life on the siu'face of the 



genesis, the three great divisions | tinctions which I have adopted ; 



being the abstract, abstract -con- ' and I remind them again that I 



Crete, and concrete sciences. My \ am not writing a history of Science 



readers will readily see the j but of Thought, and that all 



similarities and the differences divisions of this great subject are, 



which exist between this classi- more or less, arbitrary, 

 fication and the more general dis- 



