95 



CHAPTER VII. 



ON THE PHYSICAL VIEW OF NATURE. 



I HAVE already remarked that none of the three great i. 



Becapitula- 



generalisations which we have so far reviewed have been * ion - 

 creations of the philosophers of the nineteenth century. 

 Their first enunciation belongs to antiquity, though they 

 have only within the last three hundred years been ex- 

 pressed in sufficiently precise terms to permit of practical 

 measurements and mathematical deductions. The first 

 step towards a scientifically comprehensive employment 

 of the familiar but vague terms of attraction, of atoms, 

 and of undulations came, as we have seen, in each 

 case from some solitary thinker of this country : from 

 Newton, from Dalton, from Thomas Young. The system- 

 atic elaboration belongs to the combined scientific exer- 

 tions of all the civilised nations of the world. In books 

 on astronomy, physics, and chemistry, up to the middle of 

 the century, we can hardly find any theoretical exposi- 

 tions which are not based upon one or more of these 

 three ideas. Indeed they govern the entire science of 

 inanimate nature during the first half of the century. 

 None of these three principles, however, appeared suf- 



