14 
INTRODUCTION. 
!i 
parties for the purpose of establishing a body of doctrine, and, if possible, of referring the | 
whole to one single law, under the universal expression of which all might be resolved. ^ 
Particular Physics, or Natural History, — for these terms are synonymous — has for ' 
its object to apply specially the laws recognized by the various branches of General j 
Physics, to the numerous and varied beings which exist in nature, in order to explain 
the phenomena which they severally present. 
In this extended sense, it would also include Astronomy ; but that science, suffi- : 
ciently elucidated by Mechanics, and completely subjected to its laws, employs methods 
too different from those required by ordinary Natural History, to permit of its cultiva- 
tion by the students of the latter. 
Natural History, then, is confined to objects which do not allow of rigorous 
calculation, or of precise measurement in all their parts. Meteorology, also, is 
subtracted from it, to be ranged under General Physics ; so that, properly speaking, 
it considers only inanimate bodies, called minerals, and the various kinds of living 
beings, in ail which we may observe the effects, more or less various, of the laws of 
motion and chemical attraction, and of all the other causes analyzed by General Physics. 
Natural History should, in strictness, employ the same modes of procedure as the 
general sciences ; and it does so, in fact, whenever the objects of its study are so 
little complex as to permit of it. But this is very seldom the case. 
An essential difference, in effect, between the general sciences and Natural History 
is, that, in the former, phenomena are examined, the conditions of which are all 
regulated by the examiner, in order, by their analysis, to arrive at general laws ; while 
in the latter, they occur under circumstances beyond the control of him v^ho studies 
them for the purpose of discovering, amid the complication, the effects of general 
laws already known. It is not permitted for him, as in the case of the experimenter, 
to subtract successively from each condition, and so reduce the problem to its 
elements ; but he must take it entire, with all its conditions at once, and can analyze 
only in thought. Suppose, for example, we attempt to isolate the numerous pheno- 
mena which compose the life of an animal a little elevated in the scale ; a single one 
being suppressed, the life is wholly annihilated. 
Dynamics have thus become a science almost purely of calculation ; Chemistry is 
still a science wholly [chiefly*] of experiment ; and Natural History will long remain, 
in a great number of its branches, one of pure observation. 
These three terms sufficiently designate the modes of procedure employed in the 
three branches of the Natural Sciences ; but in establishing between them very different 
degrees of certitude, they at the same time indicate the point to which the two latter 
should tend, in order to approach perfection. 
Calculation, so to speak, commands Nature ; it determines phenomena more exactly ! 
than observation can make them known : experiment forces her to unveil ; while obser- 
vation watches her when deviating from her normal course, and seeks to surprise her. 
Natural History has, moreover, a principle on which to reason, which is peculiar to 
it, and which it employs advantageously on many occasions ; it is that of the conditions 
of existence, commonly termed final causes. As nothing can exist without the concur- 
rence of those conditions which render its existence possible, the component parts of each 
* The discovery of the atomic theory has reduced many of its phenomena to calculation. — E d. 
