it will be as well therefore to keep silence on the subject.' But, in truth, the Baconian or inductive method is entirely opposite to the theological, or deductive, method. Induction, resting on an appeal to nature, subordinates ancient principles to modern experience. Deduction, being an appeal to authority,1 begins, not with experience, but with principles regarded as inscrutable. The deductive reasoner therein assuming the very preliminaries which the inductive enquirer would investigate; he suspecting that theological premises are probably the result of the inductions of ancient times, and that such inductions periodically need revising in the light of advancing science.2

Such, within the limits my lecture allows me, is a brief outline of the essential principles of the inductive philosophy, as expounded by Lord Bacon. From Bacon's time its influence has spread with a rapidity commensurate with the progress of scientific discovery, producing, amongst other notable examples of inductive investigation, Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding,3 Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population, and Sir John Herschel's Discourse on the Study of

The abjuration of human authority is the first principle of Lord Bacon's Philosophy.'-Hallam's Lit. of Europe, vol. ii. p. 408. 2 One highly distinctive characteristic of the modern inductive philosophy is the principle of unlimited freedom of enquiry, and the rejection of the trammels of authority.'-Baden Powell's Order of Nature, Essay I., sec. 2.

3 'We may take leave to suggest that the most valuable part of Locke's Psychology, that which has been a lasting addition to knowledge, really was the result of the employment of the inductive method.'-Dr. Maudsley's Physiology and Pathology of the Mind, chap. i. p 25.

4 Lardner's Cyclopædia, Longmans, 1831. Herschel has con

Natural Philosophy. But the wonderful works in which Bacon so eloquently displayed its principles remained, for unrivalled perfection in their own department of thought, almost a solitary monument, until the appearance of a writer-an eminent Frenchman, but recently deceased-to whose philosophy I now proceed to invite your attention.

It may possibly strike some of you as a notion altogether novel, to couple the name of Comte with that of Bacon. At any rate, before I attempt to point out how Comte, designing to build on the foundations which the sagacity of Bacon had laid, has, of all subsequent philosophers, been the one who has most considerably extended and verified the application of the inductive method, I will, to obviate misconception, beg of you to understand that I refer to Comte only as an inductive philosopher, and that by reciting some, I am not to be considered as endorsing the whole, of his opinions. From much that he has written, especially in his later works,1 I, indeed, entirely dissent; and I

tributed to "Lardner " a discourse on Natural Philosophy, the finest work of philosophical genius in our age, or perhaps (as I exclude the sciences) the finest since Bacon, who, though the greatest of philosophers, has properly no science. I firmly believe no other man in Europe could have written Herschel's discourse.'Sir J. Mackintosh. See his Life, Moxon, 1835, vol. ii. p. 480.

1 The later works of Comte are distinguished from his principal work by the difference of their method. Comte abandoned the objective method upon which his earlier works are founded, and adopted the subjective method. This change of method is severely, but not, I think, unjustly criticised by E. Littré. He states correctly that 'Dans la méthode subjective le point de départ est une conception de l'esprit, qui pose, a priori, comme on dit, un certain principe métaphysique d'où il déduit.' The objective method is

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must be permitted to say, I cannot help thinking that the zeal of his disciples, since their master's death, has led them to impart a prominence to such later and unscientific views, which Comte himself, were he living and of sound mind, (we know that unhappily he was not always sane,) would probably be the first to deplore and repudiate. It is, however, to Comte's masterpiece in the French language that I am about to refer, and to which he gave the title Philosophie positive;1 a title which has not hitherto, that I am aware of, been adequately translated into English,2 an omission much to be lamented, for it can hardly be doubted that if the work itself had been introduced to English thought in a manner intelligible and attractive to average Englishmen, a real knowledge of Comte's Philosophy would be far more widely diffused than it is, and the facility for misrepresenting it proportionately diminished. I believe I am accurate in remarking that, speaking critically, we have no such phrase in the English

quite different; there, 'le point de départ est un résultat d'expérience.'-Auguste Comte, &c., par E. Littré, p. 532.

1 Cours de Philosophie positive, par Auguste Comte, troisième éd. Paris, 1869, 6 vols.

2 This remark applies to the title only. The work itself has been very ably translated, and judiciously condensed and abridged in the process, by Harriet Martineau, 2 vols., Chapman, 1853. This translation has been highly praised by Comte himself, Lettres à Miss Henriette Martineau. Auguste Comte, &c., par E. Littré, chap. xiii., Paris, 1864; by A. S. Farrar, in his Critical History of Free Thought, Murray, 1862; and is used by Dr. Maudsley in his able work on the Physiology and Pathology of the Mind, Macmillan, 1867. My quotations are, for the convenience of English readers, mostly taken from this translation, referring simply to volume and page.

philosophical vocabulary as "Positive Philosophy,' unless it may be thought to have been very recently naturalised; and no ordinary Englishman, I think, for the first time hearing such a phrase, would be likely even to guess at its meaning; and yet the meaning of Comte, when we look into the work itself, is transparently clear, for there we find that his philosophy is, in substance and spirit, precisely the development of the true inductive idea, viz., the invariability of natural law, analysed up to its first principles, and extended in its application to every subject, including society and morals, of which the human reason can take cognizance. He there states himself that the founders of the philosophy he is expounding were especially Lord Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes, each of whom, he observes, was aware of its true character, understood its conditions, and foresaw its final supremacy;1 and there can scarcely be a question that Comte's Philosophy, as much as, not to say even more than; Lord Bacon's, would be more accurately designated to English ears by our wellunderstood term Inductive Philosophy,' or by some clear equivalent.2

1 'Bacon, Galilée, et. Descartes, que la plus lointaine postérité proclamera toujours les premiers fondateurs immédiats de la philosophie positive; puisque chacun d'eux en a déjà dignement senti le vrai caractère, suffisamment compris les conditions nécessaires, et convenablement prévu l'ascendant final.'-Comte, Leçon 57.

2 The fundamental agreement between Bacon and Comte results in reality from the identity of their method, known amongst English thinkers as the inductive or objective method. In Germany 'realistic' is the term by which it is usually distinguished. (See Dr. Fischer's Realistic Philosophy and its Age.) The objective method seeks truth in the relation of objects. The subjective

It is to this work exclusively that my subsequent criticism on Comte is intended to apply. A work, indeed, which, under whatever title, and with all its defects, redundances, and errors, is regarded by nearly all who have studied it as one of the noblest contributions to the science of human progress that has ever emanated from a single pen.

The chief particulars in which, in this able treatise, the Inductive Philosophy has been verified and expanded on Lord Bacon's principles, may be briefly summarised as follows. Comte commences1 what I may term his argument by pointing out, with remarkable originality, that the greater part of all our real knowledge, both in the progress of its own growth, as well as in its contact with the human mind, appears to pass through three distinct stages, corresponding with the divisions to which I alluded at the commencement of my discourse-viz., the theological, or supernatural, its earliest stage; the metaphysical, or abstract, its transition stage; and the scientific, or natural, its final stage; and that the human mind also

method seeks it in the relation of ideas. The weakness of the subjective method is its impossibility of applying verification; whereas the security of the objective method lies in its vigilant verification. According to the objective method, the successive steps of discovery being observation, hypothesis, verification, that is, confrontation with the facts of nature through sensual perception. See G. H. Lewes's Hist. of Philosophy, 'The Objective and Subjective Methods,' vol. i. prolegom.

1 Première Leçon.-The general view of Comte's philosophy given in the text is, of course, very slight and cursory. It is condensed from a consideration of the whole of his treatise, and hardly admits of precise reference to particular portions.