its means discoveries could be made, so that almost all minds could be brought nearly to the same level, and make discoveries as equally as they could draw circles by compasses. That he entirely failed in this is true, and it is probable that his failure in that instance has had some effect in making his real merits less thought of than they deserve. But he failed in this instance by not observing his own rules. For he has laid down that the conceptions of a science are to be framed with exactly the same care as the axioms, or general principles. And he fell into exactly the same error himself as he charged upon the Aristotelians, namely, considering Logic as an instrument of discovery. Whereas the fundamental conception of Logic is not the science of discovering truth, but the science of judging whether or not certain alleged discoveries are true. Logic is the science of Judgment, and not an art of discovery, nor even an art of reasoning. The faculty of proposing notions, or ideas, or laws, or reasons, belongs to the Imagination or the Invention; but all these ideas, conceptions, or laws, must be submitted to the tribunal of the Reason, or Logic, before they can be finally admitted to be true. And it is the province of Logic to discover and apply the tests which any conception, or axiom, must satisfy before it can be admitted to be true. Cicero has described once, and for ever, the true function of Logic.-" In hâc arte, si modo est hæc ars, nullum est preceptum quo modo verum inveniatur, sed tantum est quo modo JUDICETUR.”1 When, therefore, we separate what falls within the limits of this conception from what transgresses it; when' we consider that in his day there was not a single science from which he could draw his observations, there is no candid mind but must be astonished at his penetration and sagacity in anticipating and constructing the Science of Sciences. For the Novum Organum is not the science or the art of discovery, but it is the Theory of Theorizing, or the Theory of Generalization: it is the science and the art of judging and deciding whether the conceptions and the axioms of the various sciences are true. No one can dispute the merit of Aristotle in discovering the syllogistic mode of reasoning, nor can blame him because his injudicious followers pushed it far beyond what he ever intended. But Aristotle founded his system inductively: 1 De Oratore, II., 38. he framed it by observing what examples of reasoning were acknowledged to be valid by common consent. Bacon founded his system à priori, with no single instance of an Inductive Science in existence. He made no claim to have created a science, but only to have proclaimed the only true method by which a science could be created. And though no doubt additions have been made to Inductive Logic in modern times, yet the amount of success he achieved is truly marvellous. By a curious whim of fortune, the chief of the school of à priori reasoners founded his system inductively: the chief of the school of Inductive Logic founded his system à priori. 7. And this great discovery, first seen and proclaimed by Bacon, has been repeatedly enforced by the most eminent men since. Thus, Newton says that an extension of our knowledge of the laws of Natural Philosophy would certainly extend our knowledge of the laws of Moral Philosophy. So Bishop Butler says—“ There is much more exact correspondence between the natural and the moral world than we are apt to take notice of." And the most celebrated metaphysical writers of the last century held the same doctrine. 8. The earliest school of Economists in modern times acknowledged the same principles. Seeing, as is explained in a subsequent section, the intolerable misery under which their country groaned, a few righteous and generous philosophers struck out the idea that there must be some natural science, some principles of eternal truth, with regard to the social relations of mankind, the violation of which was the cause of that hideous misery which afflicted their native land. Although they did not in all respects succeed, and were somewhat hasty in laying down general principles, so that in fact they gave their philosophy too much the air of à priori dogmatism, they nevertheless acknowledged the doctrine that there is a Natural Moral Science, whence they were called PHYSIOCRATES. But this doctrine was proclaimed with much more earnestness and effect by J. B. Say, the French Economist, who however had read Bacon with such extraordinary carelessness as to say "The Chancellor Bacon, who was the first to teach that to understand the processes of Nature we must consult, not the writings of Aristotle, but Nature herself, by judicious observations and well-contrived experiments, was entirely ignorant that the same method was 1 applicable to moral and political sciences, and that it would obtain the same success in them!!" Passing over, however, this extraordinary statement, he says:-"In Political Economy, as in Physics, and in every thing else, men have made systems before establishing truths; that is, they have published as truth unfounded conceptions and pure assertions. Afterwards they applied to this science the methods which have contributed so much, since the time of Bacon, to the progress of all the others, that is the method of experiment, which essentially consists in not admitting as true anything of which observation and experience have not proved the reality, and as general truths only such conclusions as naturally flow from them. This entirely excludes those prejudices and those authorities which in science, as in morals, in literature, and in government, intrude themselves between man and the truth." Again-"The manner how things are and how they happen constitute what is called the nature of things, and exact observation of the nature of things is the only foundation of all truth. Thence spring, too, different kinds of sciences: sciences which may be called descriptive, which consist in naming and classifying objects, like Botany and Natural History. Then the Experimental Sciences, which teach us the reciprocal actions which things exercise upon each other, or, in other words, the connection between effects and their causes, such as Physics and Chemistry. These last require that we should study the very nature of things, because it is by virtue of their nature that they act and produce their effects it is because it is the nature of the sun to be luminous, and of the moon to be opaque, that when the moon passes before the sun the latter is eclipsed. A careful analysis sometimes is enough to inform us of the nature of a thing: sometimes it is only clearly made known to us by its effects; and when we cannot devise experiments on purpose, observation is in every case necessary to confirm what analysis can teach us. "These principles which have guided me will assist me to distinguish two sciences which have been almost always confounded-Political Economy, which is an experimental science, and Statistics, which is only a descriptive science. 1 Cours d'économie politique, Vol. II., p. 550. 2 Traité d'économie politique. Discours Préliminaire, p. 3. "Political Economy, as it is studied at present, is entirely founded on facts: because the nature of things is a fact, as well as the result which flows from it. * * * Political Economy is established on impregnable foundations as soon as its fundamental principles are rigorous deductions from general undoubted facts." 9. We have now, we think, offered ample evidence to shew that the great doctrine discovered and proclaimed by Bacon, that Physical Science is the true basis of all science, was admitted and acknowledged to be true by a long line of illustrious men, and among others by the cultivators of the new science which was rising into existence-Political Economy. How far they succeeded in realizing this conception is quite another matter. The great point was that the principle was admitted, and carried within itself the method of judging and correcting any special errors that might be made in any parti cular science. We have now to notice another writer who has had many ardent admirers in recent times. Auguste Comte proclaims the Doctrine of the Continuity of the Sciences, but fails to make Economics an Inductive Science. 10. AUGUSTE COMTE was born at Montpellier in 1795, of a high Catholic and Royalist family, and was placed at one of Napoleon's Lyceums, where great efforts were made to restore the old theologico-metaphysical system. Scarcely 14 years of age, he revolted against the system, and resolved to commence a universal regeneration, both political and physical. In 1814 he entered the Ecole Polytechnique, and the mathematical studies of the place strongly confirmed this tendency. He became convinced that the same spirit of philosophizing must be applied to vital and social questions, as had already been applied to inorganic substances, and that the education which stopped at the latter was imperfect. The whole system of this Philosophy he called the Encyclopædic Hierarchy. 11. Comte denominates his doctrine the "Positive Philosophy," because he says that every science has passed through three stages of opinion-First, The Theological-when men in 1 Traité d'économie politique. Discours Préliminaire p. 5. their ignorance and incapacity to account for phenomena, referred them on all occasions to the interposition of the Deity-Secondly, The Metaphysical-when they had abandoned the theological stage, they tried to speculate on the causes of phenomena, and attributed them to certain mysterious agencies. Comte maintains that this is beyond the reach of human faculties, and that all they can do is to discover the Laws of the Phenomena. As an instance of the metaphysical state of science he takes the two prevalent theories of light-the emission and the wave theory. Both these he condemns as unphilosophical, and considers the researches into the laws of heat as the true model of scientific investigation. This system of inquiring only into the Laws of Phenomena, he denominates the "Positive" system, to which all Philosophy will, he asserts, finally confine itself. 12. Now there is much truth in what he says regarding the theological phase of opinion. But Bacon had said the very same thing long before. He tells us that Providence acts only through secondary laws, and that these are the only ones which the philosopher has to investigate. So that there is no novelty in this part of Comte's doctrine. In the next place men of science, long before Comte, were perfectly agreed that the true method of procedure in every science is to begin by ascertaining the Laws of the Phenomena. Newton laid this down in his Optics, and the rule was perfectly well understood and acted upon by all physicists long before Comte. But with respect to Comte's next doctrine, that philosophers must stop there, and never seek to investigate the causes of these laws,-that is a limitation of the powers of the human mind no physicist will ever submit to. In fact, as soon as laws are proved to be true they become phenomena. A true theory is a fact which is proved by circumstantial evidence. A theory is nothing but a reason, or a principle, or a law, which explains some phenomenon; and of course, if the true reason be ascertained, it is a fact. By collecting a vast body of these laws together, the human mind naturally and irresistibly endeavours to discover, by the same method of philosophy, if these phenomena are not subject to general laws, like the first order of phenomena. They will certainly try to discover whether there are laws of laws. When we once seek for laws at all, it is not more metaphysical to seek for the law of a law, than for the law of a phenomenon. In |