These attempts are traced
in classical antiquity in those treatises on the principles of things which
emanated from the Ionian school, and in which all the phenomena of nature
were subjected to hazardous speculations, based upon a small number of
observations. By degrees, as the influence of great historical events has
favored the development of every branch of science supported by observation,
that ardor has cooled which formerly led men to seek the essential nature
and connection of things by ideal construction and in purely rational
principles. In recent times, the mathematical portion of natural philosophy
has been most remarkably and admirably enlarged. The method and the
instrument (analysis) have been simultaneously perfected. That which has
been acquired by means so different -- by the ingenious application of
atomic suppositions, by the more general and intimate study of phenomena,
and by the improved construction of new apparatus -- is the common property
of mankind, and shouldnot, in our opinion, now, more than in ancient times,
be withdrawn from the free exercise of speculative thought.
It can not be denied that in this process of thought, the results of
experience have had to contend with many disadvantages; we must not,
therefore, be surprised if, in the perpetual vicissitude of theoretical
views, as is ingeniously expressed by the author of 'Giordano Bruno', "most
men see nothing in philosophy but a succession of passing meteors, while
even the grander forms in which she has revealed herself share the fate of
comets, bodies that do not rank in popular opinion among the eternal and
permanent works of nature,
p 78
but are regarded as mere fugitive apparitions of igncor vapor.
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