DEFINITIONS. 175 



called, can hardly in any degree be considered as a science 

 depending on calculation ; and perhaps this negative pro- 

 perty, could we draw a sufficiently distinct line between 

 calculation and analogy, would serve the best to distin- 

 guish it from the mixed sciences. Analogy is well known 

 to be the very foundation of Natural History, not however 

 so much by our thus arguing, as in metaphysics or mathe- 

 matics, from things known to things unknown, as by ac- 

 quiring from the comparison of two things placed before 

 our eyes more accurate ideas of the nature of both. Though 

 therefore analogy be rarely applied by the naturalist to 

 considerations of quantity as in the mixed sciences, yet 

 such consideration's occur often enough to render it ex- 

 tremely difficult, if not impossible, to define exactly the 

 object of his study. 



Even in Mineralogy, which has hitherto been considered 

 in the true department of Natural History, a system of laws 

 has been discovered that seems to depend entirely on calcu- 

 lation; and thus the connexion of the study with Chemistry, 

 of which indeed it appears only a branch, has in one sense 

 become still more evident than it was before. If Mine- 

 ralogy then be within the pale of Natural History, by 

 what rule are we to exclude Chemistry ? And if Chemistry 

 be admitted, which of the mixed sciences cannot be shown 

 to have a right to enter? Now to consider Natural Philo- 

 sophy as forming only a division of Natural History seems 

 quite contrary to the ordinary classification of human 

 knowledge, and affords, I think, a very obvious reason 

 either for restricting the objects of the latter science, or 

 for giving it an importance to which it has never yet been 

 thought entitled. But for the present we return to the 

 consideration of the beings which constitute the universe, 



