VI.] Chauncey Wright. 85 



ness in another, as we are very likely to have what 

 the French would call "the defects of our excellences," 

 so we may perhaps count it as a weakness, or at least a 

 limitation, in Mr. Wright that he was somewhat over, 

 suspicious of all attempts at constructing ideally 

 coherent and comprehensive systems. That there is 

 coherency throughout the processes of Nature he 

 would certainly have admitted, in so far as belief in 

 the universality of causation is to be construed as 

 such an admission. But that there is any such dis- 

 cernible coherency in the results of causation as 

 would admit of description in a grand series of all- 

 embracing generalisations, I think he would have 

 doubted or denied. Such denial or doubt seems, at 

 least, to be implied in his frequent condemnation of 

 cosmic or synthetic systems of philosophy as meta- 

 physical " anticipations of Nature," incompatible with 

 the true spirit of Baconism. The denial or doubt 

 would have referred, perhaps, not so much to the 

 probable constitution of Nature as to the possibilities 

 of human knowledge. He would have argued that 

 the stupendous group of events which we call the 

 universe consists so largely of unexplored, or even 

 unsuspected, phenomena that the only safe general- 

 isations we can make concerning it must needs be 

 eminently fragmentary ; and if any one had asked 



