6 



HABIT AND INTELLIGENCE. 



Sciences 

 of history 

 and of 

 language. 



Benefit 

 of this 

 ■widened 

 view of 

 science. 



Summary 

 of preced- 

 ing para- 

 graphs. 



scientific when it is reduced to principles, and the limita- 

 tion of the word to a particular class of subjects is due 

 merely to the fact, that for the last few centuries the 

 mathematical and physical sciences (including the science 

 of life) are those which have been cultivated with the 

 most success; so that in the imaginations of men they 

 have come to dwarf all others by comparison. But this 

 limited use of the word science was never universal ; 

 the existence of the mental and moral sciences was never 

 forgotten ; and we have now learned to use familiarly such 

 expressions as "the science of history" and "the science of 

 language." These are not mere chance phrases. They are 

 indications that a time will come, and is coming, when 

 every subject of thought which is capable of being syste- 

 matically reasoned about and understood will be regarded 

 as belonging to the domain of science, and when the use 

 of the word science in the sense of mathematics and 

 physics exclusively will be extinct ; or, if it survive, will 

 survive as the lelic of an extinct habit of thought : like 

 the word mathematics {to. /ladij/xaTa), in the sense of 

 geometry and algebra only, or learning in the sense of mere 

 erudition. It is difficult to overrate the intellectual gain 

 of the increased wideness of view, or the moral gain of 

 the increased liberality of feeling, which may be hoped for 

 when all students whatever have thus learned to recognise 

 each other as fellow-workers. 



I am of course aware that these remarks on the mutual 

 relation of the various sciences are very slight and super- 

 ficial ; and I intend, towards the end of this work, to 

 devote a chapter to the classification of the sciences, in 

 which I shall state my ideas on the subject more com- 

 pletely and systematically. 



In the foregoing paragraphs I have enumerated some of 

 the results of scientific progress which have become dis- 

 tinguishing intellectual characteristics of the present af^e. 

 They may be thus briefly summed up : In the first place, 

 we have a profounder comprehension than any previous 

 generation ever had, of the uniformity and constancy of 

 natural law, not only through universal space, but also 



