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CHAPTER XII. 



ON THE STATISTICAL VIEW OF NATURE. 



I HAVE now treated of the several grand and general 

 aspects under which the objects of nature can be 

 scientifically regarded, and have tried to show how 

 these aspects, not unknown to former ages, have never- 

 theless, in the course of the nineteenth century, become 

 more definite, and accordingly more useful, as means for 

 describing, measuring, and, in many cases, predicting 

 phenomena. It is true that the two last chapters, 

 which dealt with the phenomena of Life and Mind, 

 had to take notice of a principle or of principles which 

 have hardly yet received any scientific definition at all, 

 and which in the progress of the sciences which deal 

 with them have played rather a negative part. It has 

 been mainly by eliminating the conceptions of life and 

 1. of mind as special agencies, factors, or entities that the 



Life and _ 



Hnutin^ scientific study of living and conscious beings has pro- 

 conceptions, gressed ; by showing more and more how an accurate 

 and useful knowledge of much of their nature and 

 behaviour can be gained with the aid of the methods 

 adopted in other scientific inquiries, which we may call 

 mechanical. 



