_ ADDRESS OF PROFESSOR LOVERING. 615 
it matters not whether the individual members of a system are 
atoms or worlds, if the intervening spaces have corresponding 
magnitudes. Even in astronomy, the inspiration of mechanics 
and the pride of mathematics, how trifling is the region which has 
been subjugated to the rigid rules of the exact sciences when 
compared with the immense territories which remain under the 
jurisdiction of natural history, and must be studied, if at all, by 
the methods of the naturalist, though with an inverted microscope. 
If now we circumscribe our outlook by the line which marks 
where physical science ends and natural history begins, it will be 
possible to examine only a few of the salient points in the pros- 
pect before us: and what these are will depend upon the point 
of view which we select. Whewell presents the history of any 
Science at each of its successive epochs as circulating around one 
Powerful mind, which figures as the hero of the drama: and what- 
ever immediately precedes or follows is only the prelude or the 
closing strain to the great movement. In the philosophy of 
Comte, every science passes through a theological and metaphys- 
leal crisis before it reaches the healthy condition of positive 
knowledge, and its whole history is written out by him in these 
three acts. With Buckle, the progress of science, without which 
there could be no history, is coincident with the advance in civil- 
lation; but the action begins with science, and the reaction only 
Comes from external causes. All that science and civilization 
demand is perfect freedom of thought. The worst enemy of both 
18 the protective spirit in church and state, the former telling men 
What they must believe, the latter what they must do. 
| Each of these views of scientific development may be true but 
_ ‘Rot to the exclusion of all others. Metaphysical blindness or 
theological prejudice may block the way of science or defame its 
fair name. It has been stated that six members of the ultracler- 
mal party at Versailles voted against the appropriation for secur- 
mg observations of the approaching transit of Venus, because 
they did not believe in the Copernican system, and this too while 
the echoes of the celebration of the four hundredth birth-day of 
®pernicus are still resounding over the earth. So also, circum- 
Stances and even accidents may shape the course of discovery : 
~ happiest of all accidents, however, being the appearance on 
e of the discoverer himself. T 
The point of view which I have chosen for reviewing the close 
