ON THE STATISTICAL VIEW OF NATURE. 559 



country where banking exists. . . . The only, but let us 

 add also the safe, ground of hope for political economy, 

 is following Bacon's exhortation to recommence afresh 

 the whole work of economic inquiry. In what condi- 

 tion would chemistry, physics, geology, zoology be, and 

 other branches of natural science which have yielded 

 such prodigious results, if their students had been linked 

 to their chains of deduction from the assumptions and 

 speculations of the last century ? " To this Bagehot 

 replies : " The method which Mr Cohn suggests was 

 tried in physical science and failed. And it is very 

 remarkable that he should not have remembered it as 

 he speaks of Lord Bacon, for the method which he 

 suggests is exactly that which Lord Bacon himself 

 followed, and owing to the mistaken nature of which 

 he discovered nothing. The investigation into the 

 nature of heat in the ' Novum Organum ' is exactly such 

 a collection of facts as Mr Cohn suggests, but nothing 

 comes of it. As Mr Jevons well says, Lord Bacon's 

 notion of scientific method was that of a kind of scien- 

 tific book-keeping. Facts were to be indiscriminately 

 gathered from every source and posted in a kind of 

 ledger, from which would emerge in time a clear balance 

 of truth. It is difficult to imagine a less likely way of 

 arriving at discoveries." l 



1 ' The Postulates of English 

 Political Economy' (1885), p. 17, 

 &c. He further remarks : " If we 

 wait to reason till the ' facts ' are 

 complete, we shall wait till the 

 human race has expired. I think 

 that Mr Cohn, and those who think 

 with him, are too ' bookish ' in this 

 matter. They mean by having all 



the ' facts ' before them, having all 

 the printed facts, all the statistical 

 tables. But what has been said 

 of nature is true of commerce. 

 ' Nature," says Sir Charles Lyell, 

 ' has made it no part of her con- 

 cern to provide a record of her 

 operations for the use of men ' ; 

 nor does trade either only the 



