EXAMPLES OF THE EXPLANATION OF LAWS. 



317 



renders associations stronger in pro- 

 portion to the pleasurable or painful 

 character of the impressions, being felt 

 with peculiar force in the synchronous 

 class of associations ; it is remarked 

 by the writer referred to, that in 

 minds of strong organic sensibility 

 synchronous associations will be likely 

 to predominate, producing a tendency 

 to conceive things in pictures and in 

 the concrete, richly clothed in attri- 

 butes and circumstances, a mental 

 habit which is commonly called Ima- 

 gination, and is one of the peculiari- 

 ties of the painter and the poet ; while 

 persons of more moderate susceptibi- 

 lity to pleasure and pain will have a 

 tendency to associate facts chiefly in 

 the order of their succession, and such 

 persons, if they possess mental supe- 

 riority, will addict themselves to his- 

 tory or science rather than to creative 

 art. This interesting speculation the 

 author of the present work has en- 

 deavoured, on another occasion, to 

 pursue farther, and to examine how 

 far it will avail towards explaining 

 the peculiarities of the poetical tem- 

 perament. * It is at least an example 

 which may serve, instead of many 

 others, to show the extensive scope 

 which exists for deductive investiga- 

 tion in the important and hitherto so 

 imperfect Science of Mind. 



§ 7. The copiousness with which 

 the discovery and explanation of 

 special laws of phenomena by deduc- 

 tion from simpler and more general 

 ones has here been exemplified, was 

 prompted by a desire to characterise 

 clearly, and place in its due position 

 of importance, the Deductive Method ; 

 which, in the present state of know- 

 ledge, is destined henceforth irrevo- 

 cably to predominate in the course of 

 scientific investigation. A revolution 

 is peaceably and progressively effect- 

 ing itself in philosophy, the reverse of 

 that to which Bacon has attached his 

 name. That great man changed the 

 method of the sciences from deductive 



* IHuertations and Discmnont, toI. i., 

 fourth paper. 



to experimental, and it is now rapidly 

 reverting from experimental to deduc- 

 tive. But the deductions which Bacon 

 abolished were from premises hastily 

 snatched up or arbitrarily assumed. 

 The principles were neither established 

 by legitimate canons ot experimental 

 inquiry, nor the results tested by that 

 indispensable element of a rational 

 Deductive Method, verification by 

 specific experience. Between the 

 primitive method of Deduction and 

 that which I have attempted to 

 characterise, there is all the difference 

 which exists between the Aristotelian 

 physics and the Newtonian theory of 

 the heavens. 



It would, however, be a mistake to 

 expect that those great generalisations, 

 from which the subordinate truths of 

 the more backward sciences will pro- 

 bably at some future period be de- 

 duced by reasoning, (as the truths of 

 astronomy are deduced from the gene- 

 ralities of the Newtonian theory,) will 

 be found, in all, or even in most cases, 

 among truths now known and ad- 

 mitted. We may rest assured, that 

 many of the most general laws of 

 nature are as yet entirely unthought 

 of ; and that many others, destined 

 hereafter to assume the same charac- 

 ter, are known, if at all, only as laws 

 or properties of some limited class of 

 phenomena ; just as electricity, now 

 recognised as one of the most univer- 

 sal of natural agencies, was once 

 known only as a curious property 

 which certain substances acquired by 

 friction, of first attracting and then 

 repelling light bodies. If the theories 

 of heat, cohesion, crystallisation, and 

 chemical action are destined, as there 

 can be little doubt that they are, to 

 become deductive, the truths which 

 will then be regarded as the principia 

 of those sciences would probably, if 

 now announced, appear quite as novel* 

 as the law of gravitation appeared to 

 the contemporaries of Newton ; pos- 



* Written before the rise of the new 

 views respecting the relation of heat to 

 mechanicad force ; but confirmed rather 

 thaTi contradicted by thena. 



