"We may define the inductive method as the process of
discovering laws and rules from facts, and causes from effects;
and the deductive, as the method of deriving facts from laws,
and effects from their causes."
There is a valuable paragraph on anticipation and its uses--there is a
power and desire of the mind to project itself from the known into the
unknown, in the expectation of finding what it is in search of.
"This power of divination, this sagacity, which is the mother of
all science, we may call anticipation. The intellect, with a
dog-like instinct, will not hunt until it has found the scent.
It must have some presage of the result before it will turn its
energies to its attainment. The system of anatomy which has
immortalized the name of Oken, is the consequence of a _flash of
anticipation_, which glanced through his mind when he picked up,
in a chance walk, the skull of a deer, bleached by the weather,
and exclaimed--'_It is a vertebral column!_'"
"The man of science possesses principles--the man of art, not
the less nobly gifted, is possessed and carried away by them.
The principles which art _involves_, science _evolves_. The
truths on which the success of art depends lurk in the artist's
mind in an undeveloped state, guiding his hand, stimulating his
invention, balancing his judgment, but not appearing in regular
propositions." "An art (that of medicine for instance) will of
course admit into its limits, everything (_and nothing else_)
which can conduce to the performance of _its own proper work_;
it recognizes no other principles of selection."
"He who reads a book on logic, probably thinks no better when he
rises up than when he sat down, but if any of the principles
there unfolded cleave to his memory, and he afterwards, perhaps
unconsciously, shapes and corrects his thoughts by them, no
doubt the whole powers of his reasoning receive benefit. In a
word, every art, from reasoning to riding and rowing, is learned
by assiduous practice, and if principles do any good, it is
proportioned to the readiness with which they can be converted
into rules, and the patient constancy with which they are
applied in all our attempts at excellence."
"_A man can teach names to another man, but he cannot plant in
another's mind that far higher gift--the power of naming._"
"_Language is not only the vehicle of thought, it is a great and
efficient instrument in thinking._"
"The whole of every _science_ may be made the subject of
teaching. Not so with _art_; much of it is not teachable."
Coleridge's profound and brilliant, but unequal, and often somewhat
nebulous _Essay on Method_, is worth reading over, were it only as an
exercitation, and to impress on the mind the meaning and value of
_method_. Method is the road by which you reach, or hope to reach, a
certain end; it is a process. It is the best direction for the search
after truth. System, again, which is often confounded with it, is a
mapping out, a circumscription of knowledge, either already gained, or
theoretically laid down as probable. Aristotle had a system which did
much good, but also much mischief. Bacon was chiefly occupied in
preparing and pointing out the way--the only way--of procuring
knowledge. He left to others to systematize the knowledge after it was
got; but the pride and indolence of the human spirit lead it constantly
to build systems on imperfect knowledge. It has the trick of filling up
out of its own fancy what it has not the diligence, the humility, and
the honesty, to seek in nature; whose servant, and articulate voice, it
ought to be.
Descartes' little tract on Method is, like everything the lively and
deep-souled Breton did, full of original and bright thought.
Sir John Herschel's volume needs no praise. We know no work of the sort,
fuller of the best moral worth, as well as the highest philosophy. We
fear it is more talked of than read.
We would recommend the article in the _Quarterly Review_ as first-rate,
and written with great eloquence and grace.
SYDNEY SMITH'S _Sketches of Lectures on Moral Philosophy_.
Second Edition.
SEDGWICK'S _Discourse on the Studies at Cambridge, with a
Preface and Appendix_. Sixth Edition.
We have put these two worthies here, not because we had forgotten
them,--much less because we think less of them than the others,
especially Sydney. But because we bring them in at the end of our small
entertainment, as we hand round a liqueur--be it Curacoa, Kimmel, or old
Glenlivet--after dinner, and end with the heterogeneous
plum-pudding--that most English of realized ideas. Sydney Smith's book
is one of rare excellence, and well worthy of the study of men and
women, though perhaps not transcendental enough for our modern
philosophers, male and female. It is really astonishing how much of the
best of everything, from patriotism to nonsense, is to be found in this
volume of sketches. You may read it through, if your sides can bear such
an accumulation of laughter, with great benefit; and if you open it
anywhere, you can't read three sentences without coming across some, it
may be common thought, and often original enough, better expressed and
_put_ than you ever before saw it. The lectures on the Affections, the
Passions and Desires, and on Study, we would have everybody to read and
enjoy.
Sedgwick is a different, and, as a whole, an inferior man; but a _man_
every inch of him, and an Englishman too, in his thoughts, and in his
fine mother wit and tongue. He has, in the midst of all his confusion
and passionateness, the true instinct of philosophy--the true venatic
sense of objective truth. We know nothing better in the main, than his
demolition of what is untrue, and his reduction of what is absurd, and
his taking the wind out of what is tympanitic, in the notorious
_Vestiges_; we don't say he always does justice to what is really good
in it; his mission is to execute justice _upon it_, and that he does.
His remarks on Oken and Owen, and his quotations from Dr. Clarke's
admirable paper on the _Development of the Foetus_, in the _Cambridge
Philosophical Transactions_, we would recommend to our medical friends.
The very confusion of Sedgwick is the free outcome of a deep and racy
nature; it puts us in mind of what happened, when an Englishman was
looking with astonishment and disgust at a Scotchman eating a singed
sheep's head, and was asked by the eater what he thought of that dish?
"_Dish_, sir, do you call that a dish?" "Dish or no dish," rejoined the
Caledonian, "there's a deal o' fine confused feedin' aboot it, let me
tell you."
We conclude these rambling remarks with a quotation from Arnauld, the
friend of Pascal, and the intrepid antagonist of the Vatican and the
Grand Monarque; one of the noblest, freest, most untiring and honest
intellects, our world has ever seen. "Why don't you rest sometimes?"
said his friend Nicole to him. "Rest! why should I rest here? haven't I
an eternity to rest in?" The following sentence from his "_Port-Royal
Logic_," so well introduced and translated by Mr. Baynes, contains the
gist of all we have been trying to say. It should be engraven on the
tablets of every young student's heart--for the heart has to do with
study as well as the head.
"There is nothing more desirable than _good sense and justness
of mind_,--all other qualities of mind are of limited use, but
exactness of judgment is of general utility in every part and in
all employments of life.
"_We are too apt to employ reason merely as an instrument for
acquiring the sciences, whereas we ought to avail ourselves of
the sciences, as an instrument for perfecting our reason_;
justness of mind being infinitely more important than all the
speculative knowledge which we can obtain by means of sciences
the most solid. This ought to lead wise men to make their
sciences _the exercise and not the occupation of their mental
powers_. Men are not born to employ all their time in measuring
lines, in considering the various movements of matter: their
minds are too great, and their life too short, their time too
precious, to be so engrossed; but they are born to be just,
equitable, and prudent, in all their thoughts, their actions,
their business; to these things they ought especially to train
and discipline themselves."
So, young friends, bring _Brains_ to your work, and mix everything with
them, and them with everything. _Arma virumque_, tools and a man to use
them. Stir up, direct, and give free scope to Sir Joshua's "_that_," and
try again, and again; and look, _oculo intento, acie acerrima_. Looking
is a voluntary act,--it is the man within coming to the window; seeing
is a state,--passive and receptive, and, at the best, little more than
registrative.
Since writing the above, we have read with great satisfaction Dr.
Forbes' Lecture delivered before the Chichester Literary Society and
Mechanics' Institute, and published at their request. Its subject is,
Happiness in its relation to Work and Knowledge. It is worthy of its
author, and is, we think, more largely and finely imbued with his
personal character, than any one other of his works that we have met
with. We could not wish a fitter present for a young man starting on the
game of life. It is a wise, cheerful manly, and warm-hearted discourse
on the words of Bacon,--"He that is wise, let him pursue some desire or
other: for he that doth not affect some one thing in chief, unto him all
things are distasteful and tedious." We will not spoil this little
volume by giving any account of it. Let our readers get it, and read it.
The extracts from his Thesis, _De Mentis Exercitatione et Felicitate
exinde derivanda_, are very curious--showing the native vigor and bent
of his mind, and indicating also, at once the identity and the growth of
his thoughts during the lapse of thirty-three years.
We give the last paragraph, the sense and the filial affection of which
are alike admirable. Having mentioned to his hearers that they saw in
himself a living illustration of the truth of his position, that
happiness is a necessary result of knowledge and work, he thus
concludes:--
"If you would further desire to know to what besides I am
chiefly indebted for so enviable a lot, I would say:--1st,
Because I had the good fortune to come into the world with a
healthful frame, and with a sanguine temperament. 2d, Because I
had no patrimony, and was therefore obliged to trust to my own
exertions for a livelihood. 3d, Because I was born in a land
where instruction is greatly prized and readily accessible. 4th,
Because I was brought up to a profession which not only
compelled mental exercise, but supplied for its use materials of
the most delightful and varied kind. _And lastly and
principally, because the good man to whom I owe my existence,
had the foresight to know what would be best for his children.
He had the wisdom, and the courage, and the exceeding love, to
bestow all that could be spared of his worldly means, to
purchase for his sons, that which is beyond price_, EDUCATION;
well judging that the means so expended, if hoarded for future
use, would be, if not valueless, certainly evanescent, while the
precious treasure for which they were exchanged, a cultivated
and instructed mind, would not only last through life, but might
be the fruitful source of treasures far more precious than
itself. So equipped he sent them forth into the world to fight
Life's battle, leaving the issue in the hand of God; confident,
however, that though they might fail to achieve renown or to
conquer Fortune, they possessed _that_ which, if rightly used,
could win for them the yet higher prize of HAPPINESS."
* * * * *
Since this was written, many good books have appeared, but we would
select three, which all young men should read and get--Hartley
Coleridge's _Lives of Northern Worthies_, Thackeray's _Letters of Brown
the Elder_, and _Tom Brown's School-days_--in spirit and in expression,
we don't know any better models for manly courage, good sense, and
feeling, and they are as well written as they are thought.
There are the works of another man, one of the greatest, not only of
our, but of any time, to which we cannot too earnestly draw our young
readers. We mean the philosophical writings of Sir William Hamilton. We
know no more invigorating, quickening, rectifying kind of exercise, than
reading with a will, anything he has written upon permanently important
subjects. There is a greatness and simplicity, a closeness of thought, a
glance keen and wide, a play of the entire nature, and a truthfulness
and downrightness, with an amount, and accuracy, and vivification of
learning, such as we know of in no one other writer, ancient or
modern--not even Leibnitz; and we know no writings which so wholesomely
at once exalt and humble the reader, make him feel what is in him, and
what he can and may, as well as what he cannot, and need never hope to
know. In this respect, Hamilton is as grand as Pascal, and more simple;
he exemplifies everywhere his own sublime adaptation of
Scripture--unless a man become a little child, he cannot enter into the
kingdom; he enters the temple stooping, but he presses on, intrepid and
alone, to the inmost _adytum_, worshipping the more the nearer he gets
to the inaccessible shrine, whose veil no mortal hand has ever rent in
twain. And we name after him, the thoughtful, candid, impressive little
volume of his pupil, his friend, and his successor, Professor Fraser.
The following passage from Sir William Hamilton's _Dissertations_,
besides its wise thought, sounds in the ear like the pathetic and
majestic sadness of a symphony by Beethoven:--
"There are two sorts of ignorance: we philosophize to escape
ignorance, and the consummation of our philosophy is ignorance;
we start from the one, we repose in the other; they are the
goals from which, and to which, we tend; and the pursuit of
knowledge is but a course between two ignorances, as human life
is itself only a travelling from grave to grave.
{Tis bios?--Ek tymboio thoron, eti tymbon hodeuo.}
The highest reach of human science is the scientific recognition
of human ignorance; 'Qui nescit ignorare, ignorat scire.' This
'learned ignorance' is the rational conviction by the human mind
of its inability to transcend certain limits; it is the
knowledge of ourselves,--the science of man. This is
accomplished by a demonstration of the disproportion between
what is to be known, and our faculties of knowing,--the
disproportion, to wit, between the infinite and the finite. In
fact, the recognition of human ignorance, is not only the one
highest, but the one true, knowledge; and its first-fruit, as
has been said, is humility. Simple nescience is not proud;
consummated science is positively humble. For this knowledge it
is not, which 'puffeth up;' but its opposite, the conceit of
false knowledge,--the conceit, in truth, as the apostle notices,
of an ignorance of the very nature of knowledge:--
'Nam nesciens quid scire sit,
Te scire cuncta jactitas.'
"But as our knowledge stands to Ignorance, so stands it also to
Doubt. Doubt is the beginning and the end of our efforts to
know; for as it is true,--'Alte dubitat qui altius credit,' so
it is likewise true,--'Quo magis quaerimus magis dubitamus.'
"The grand result of human wisdom is thus only a consciousness
that what we know is as nothing to what we know not, ('Quantum
est quod nescimus!')--an articulate confession, in fact, by our
natural reason, of the truth declared in revelation, that '_now_
we see through a glass, darkly.'"
His pupil writes in the same spirit and to the same end:--"A discovery,
by means of reflection and mental experiment, of the _limits_ of
knowledge, is the highest and most universally applicable discovery of
all; it is the one through which our intellectual life most strikingly
blends with the moral and practical part of human nature. Progress in
knowledge is often paradoxically indicated by a diminution in the
_apparent bulk_ of what we know. Whatever helps to work off the dregs of
false opinion, and to purify the intellectual mass--whatever deepens our
conviction of our infinite ignorance--really adds to, although it
sometimes seems to diminish, the rational possessions of man. This is
the highest kind of merit that is claimed for Philosophy, by its
earliest as well as by its latest representatives. It is by this
standard that Socrates and Kant measure the chief results of their
toil."