not multiply instances of this unbounded diversity of Nature's operations; every one's memory will supply enough of them for the purposes of this argument. Speaking generally, we may say, no two objects are ever created on precisely the same pattern, and no two events ever happened, all the circumstances of which were exactly alike. When M. Comte boasts of the power of science "to predict with absolute precision," let him be required to tell us how many of the next twenty children who are born in Paris will be red-haired, and how many of them will have blue eyes, aquiline noses, and thin lips.

Secondly, we deny that the phenomena which are dependent on the will of any being are therefore variable and uncertain, so that they can never be foreseen. Indeed, by asserting that they are so, M. Comte again flatly contradicts himself, and takes away the corner-stone of his own favorite science of sociology. As society is composed only of individuals, the movements and aspects of society could not be predicted, if the actions of the individual members were not, at least in certain respects, subject to law. The reality and the possibility of such sciences as politics and political economy, to say nothing of sociology, depend on the known facts that the action of men is influenced by motives, that there are certain leading motives, such as the desire of life, health, freedom, and property, which are common to all men, and therefore that the conduct of men on certain occasions, and to a limited extent, can be anticipated with full confidence that the prediction will be justified by the result. Were it not so, no general maxims could be established in political or social science, and no lessons could be derived from history. The conduct of men offers the same combination of uniformity with variety, of unity of principle underlying innumerable differences of detail, which is seen in the works of God in the external universe. According as the observer stands nearer or farther off, according as his object is to arrange and classify for the purposes of science, or to particularize for the sake of description, so will he be more struck with the evidences of order and uniformity, or with those of diversity and fluctuation. Look at great masses of men only from a distance, at which minute. peculiarities are lost in the general effects, (just as the sounds

from a distant city are blended in one hollow murmur,) and they appear like machines, or rather the multitude itself seems one great machine. But examine microscopically the conduct of an individual for two successive hours, and it appears a mass of inconsistencies, motiveless alterations, and oddities that baffle all computation and foresight. We know nothing directly of M. Comte's own habits; but it is safe to affirm, that, for many years, he walked each morning from his resi dence to the Polytechnic School, appeared in the class-room at a fixed hour, and performed a certain unvarying round of duties. And we may be equally sure, that, in passing over the ground, on no morning did he step precisely in the foottracks which he had made the day before. Will alone, it is true, would be changeful and irregular; but will enlightened by human reason is comparatively steady and uniform in its operations; and will enlightened by infinite wisdom, we may presume, knows no change of purpose or shifting of means, but reconciles perfect order with endless variety. And such is the character both of the material and moral universe.

When M. Comte assumes, as he always does by implica tion while scoffing at theological faith, that whatever takes place in conformity to law also takes place necessarily, he is again inconsistent with himself. The principles of his philosophy rigidly exclude all idea of causation; and where there is no causation, there is no necessary connection. Invariable concomitance or succession is not causation; and when the idea of causation is excluded, we have no right to conclude that the succession is invariable. We can only say that the law has held good so far as our experience, or the experience others, has extended. For aught we know, the law is one recent introduction; for aught we know, it will soon cease operate. The law is made known only by a process of induction, and induction is no ground of demonstration. Inductive evidence can warrant no conclusion that extends into the future.

But it will be asserted that this is extravagant scepticism; as no one, whatever he may affect to deny on theoretical considerations, can practically doubt that the laws of nature are permanent and invariable. We admit all this; we grant that

the scepticism is extravagant upon any correct view of the phenomena of nature, and of the agency which causes them. But M. Comte excludes the idea of cause altogether; he will allow us to study the laws of nature only as phenomenal successions or coincidences, and thereby he strikes away all ground of confidence in them as unchanging. If we attribute causation to brute matter, or assert that one phenomenon in the outward universe actually causes or produces another, then we can admit that the connection between them is necessary; and if we deny causation to brute matter, and attribute all changes in the material universe to the immediate agency of the Deity, we can still believe, through our confidence in Him "with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning," that the connection will be uniform and permanent. But the Positive Philosophy rejects both of these grounds of belief, and therefore leaves us no better reason for believing that the connection will be unceasing, than we have for thinking that two clocks, which have kept time with each other for several years, will continue apparently to regulate each other's motion, and to strike the hour together as if they were parts of one machine. M. Comte endeavors to connect himself with the necessarian or fatalist on the one hand, and with the mere observer of phenomena, who seeks not to pry into the mysteries of efficient causation, on the other. But the attempt cannot succeed. The two theories are radically inconsistent with each other, and our author must take his choice between them.

In truth, the idea of cause is not only one of those primary elements of belief, which we cannot reject without overthrowing the whole structure of human knowledge, but it is a regulative principle of the human mind, the rejection of which is inconsistent with the prosecution of any mental labor and with any fruitful study of the phenomena of the material universe. The attempt to eliminate what enters into nearly every fact of consciousness is, to borrow the language of Sir James Mackintosh, "an attempt of the mind to act without its structure, and by other laws than those to which its nature has subjected its operations." Mental labor of any sort, which is voluntary, or directed by an action of the will, is ac

companied by a consciousness of effort, or of power in action, which is necessarily causative, or followed by some effect. Power in action, indeed, is a mere synonyme of causation, and is therefore necessarily attended by its effect. The cause and effect, in this case, are indissolubly blended in one act, and the one, therefore, cannot be even imagined without the other. This law of mental action is projected, so to speak, out of the mind upon the material universe, so that, whenever we behold a change, a beginning of existence, we necessarily attribute it to the action of some efficient cause. If we deny this principle of causality, we can no longer trust even the axioms upon which all mathematical reasoning is based; for they all rest upon the same evidence with it, that of intuition. If we admit the principle that every event must have a cause, but deny that the cause is ever cognizable by us, we equally reject the testimony of consciousness, which assures us that the human will is a true cause,-limited indeed, but yet supreme within its own domain. That mere matter- the mere physical phenomenon is not a real cause, is not a truth of physical science, but of metaphysical; we learn from consciousness that all truly causative action is restricted to mind, and also acquire from consciousness the tests which disprove its presence in the material universe. M. Comte is obliged to borrow the testimony of a science that he rejects, in order to build up two cardinal principles of his own system; namely, the permanency of physical laws, and the fact that our knowledge of external nature can never go beyond the observation of its phenomena, and the consequent prevision of them through their laws of coincidence or succession.

We had purposed to examine the principles of the Positive Philosophy still further, by inquiring into the details of their application to the several sciences. But the subject is an abstruse one, and our remarks upon it have already extended to so great length, that we forbear. Enough has been said to prove that so narrow and degrading a conception of the objects of inquiry, and of the principles which are applicable to the investigation of the laws of nature, can lead only to meagre and profitless results in every department of science. It is not a scheme of philosophy which is likely to find many pros

elytes, or to enjoy any other than a temporary notoriety. It has been received, as we have seen, with but little favor in France, and Miss Martineau's efforts are not likely to obtain for it much currency in England. Even the controversy which it has evoked cannot much retard its progress to oblivion.

ART. X.- Annual of Scientific Discovery: or, Year-Book of Facts in Science and Art, for 1854. Exhibiting the most important Discoveries and Improvements in Mechanics, Useful Arts, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Astronomy, Meteorology, Zoology, Botany, Mineralogy, Geology, Geography, Antiquities, &c.; together with a List of recent Scientific Publications; A Classified List of Patents; Obituaries of Eminent Scientific Men; Notes on the Progress of Science during the Year 1853, etc. Edited by DAVID A. WELLS, A. M. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 1854. 12mo. pp. 398.

FEW or none of the centuries prior to the eighteenth could have furnished for a book like this so copious materials as are now afforded in the lapse of a single year. The last year, indeed, was marked by no one world-famous invention or discovery; but it gave birth to unnumbered new applications of known principles and new corollaries from established premises. In earlier times science and art respectively characterized not the same, but successive ages. The great men of one epoch wrought from within outward in enlarged generalizations, annexing new provinces to the domain of knowledge, or arrested for analysis laws or agencies of the material universe which had eluded previous research. Their successors for more than one generation were then employed in colonizing the newly annexed territory by contrivances of practical utility, and in giving concrete shape to abstract formulæ. Indeed, the two processes belong to widely different classes of minds, which demand very unlike influences for their development, and which (whether contemporaneously or otherwise) coöperate as the stamens and pistils of a plant do in elaborating NO. 164.

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