V. The Analytical Method.

     The analytical method.—Its principle.—The conditions
     requisite to make it productive.—These conditions wanting
     or inadequate in the 18th century.—The truth and survival
     of the principle.

Such is the course to be pursued with all the sciences, and especially with the moral and political sciences. To consider in turn each distinct province of human activity, to decompose the leading notions out of which we form our conceptions, those of religion, society and government, those of utility, wealth and exchange, those of justice, right and duty. To revert to manifest facts, to first experiences, to the simple circumstances in which the elements of our ideas are included; to extricate from these the precious lode without omission or mixture; to recompose our idea with these, to define its meaning and determine its value; to substitute for the vague and vulgar notion with which we started out the precise scientific definition we arrive at, and for the impure metal we received the refined metal we recovered, constituted the prevalent method taught by the philosophers under the name of analysis, and which sums up the whole progress of the century.—Up to this point, and not farther, they are right; truth, every truth, is found in observable things, and only from these can it be derived; there is no other pathway leading to discovery. The operation, undoubtedly, is productive only when the vein is rich, and we possess the means of extracting the ore. To obtain a just notion of government, of religion, of right, of wealth, a man must be a historian beforehand, a jurisconsult and economist, and have gathered up myriad of facts; and, besides all this, he must possess a vast erudition, an experienced and professional perspicacity. If these conditions are only partially complied with, the result will only be a half finished product or a doubtful alloy, a few rough drafts of the sciences, the rudiments of pedagogy as with Rousseau, of political economy with Quesnay, Smith, and Turgot, of linguistics with Des Brosses, and of arithmetical morals and criminal legislation with Bentham. Finally, if none of these conditions are complied with, the same efforts will, in the hands of philosophical amateurs and oratorical charlatans, undoubtedly only produce mischievous compounds and destructive explosions.—Nevertheless good procedure remains good even when ignorant and the impetuous men make a bad use of it; and if we of to day resume the abortive effort of the eighteenth century, it should be within the guidelines they set out.

3101 (return)
[ "Philosophioe naturalis principia," 1687; "Optics," 1704.]

3102 (return)
[ See concerning this development Comte's "Philosophie Positive," vol. I.—At the beginning of the eighteenth century, mathematical instruments are carried to such perfection as to warrant the belief that all physical phenomena may be analyzed, light, electricity, sound, crystallization, heat, elasticity, cohesion and other effects of molecular forces.—See "Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences. II., III.]

3103 (return)
[ The travels of La Condamine in Peru and of Maupertuis in Lapland.]

3104 (return)
[ Buffon, "Théorie de la terre," 1749; "Epoques de la Nature," 1788.—"Carte géologique de l'Auvergne," by Desmarets, 1766.]

3105 (return)
[ See a lecture by M. Lacaze-Duthier on Lamarck, "Revue Scientifique," III. 276-311.]

3106 (return)
[ Buffon, "Histoire Naturelle, II. 340: "All living beings contain a vast quantity of living and active molecules. Vegetal and animal life seem to be only the result of the actions of all the small lives peculiar to each of the active molecules whose life is primitive." Cf. Diderot, "Revue d'Alembert."]

3108 (return)
[ "Philosophie de Newton," 1738, and "Physique," by Voltaire.—Cf. du Bois-Raymond, "Voltaire physician," (Revue des Cours Scientifique, V. 539), and Saigey, "la Physique de Voltaire,"—"Had Voltaire," writes Lord Brougham, "continued to devote himself to experimental physics he would undoubtedly have inscribed his name among those of the greatest discoverers of his age."]

3109 (return)
[ See his "Langue des Calculs," and his "Art de Raisonner."]

3110 (return)
[ For a popular exposition of these ideas see Voltaire, passim, and particularly the "Micromégas" and "Les Oreilles du Comte de Chesterfield."]

3111 (return)
[ Cf. Buffon, ibid.. I. 31: "Those who imagine a reply with final causes do not reflect that they take the effect for the cause. The relationship which things bear to us having no influence whatever on their origin, moral convenience can never become a physical explanation."—Voltaire, "Candide": "When His High Mightiness sends a vessel to Egypt is he in any respect embarrassed about the comfort of the mice that happen to be aboard of it?"]

3112 (return)
[ Buffon, ibid. . "Supplement," II. 513; IV. ("Epoques de la Nature"), 65, 167. According to his experiments with the cooling of a cannon ball he based the following periods: From the glowing fluid mass of the planet to the fall of rain 35,000 years. From the beginning of life to its actual condition 40,000 years. From its actual condition to the entire congealing of it and the extinction of life 93,000 years. He gives these figures simply as the minima. We now know that they are much too limited.]

3113 (return)
[ Buffon, Histoire Naturelle, ib. I. 12: "The first truth derived from this patient investigation of nature is, perhaps, a humiliating truth for man, that of taking his place in the order of animals."]

3114 (return)
[ Voltaire, "Philosophie, Du principe d'action:" "All beings, without exception, are subject to invariable laws."]

3115 (return)
[ Voltaire "Essay sur les Moeurs,", chap. CXLVII., the summary; "The intelligent reader readily perceives that he must believe only in those great events which appear plausible, and view with pity the fables with which fanaticism, romantic taste and credulity have at all times filled the world."]

3116 (return)
[ Note this expression," exegetical methods". (Chambers defines an exegetist as one who interprets or expounds.) Taine refers to methods which should allow the Jacobins, socialists, communists, and other ideologists to, from an irrefutable idea or expression, to deduct, infer, conclude and draw firm and, to them, irrefutable conclusions. (SR.)]

3117 (return)
[ "Traité de Metaphysique," chap. I. "Having fallen on this little heap of mud, and with no more idea of man than man has of the inhabitants of Mars and Jupiter, I set foot on the shore of the ocean of the country of Caffraria and at once began to search for a man. I encounter monkeys, elephants and Negroes, with gleams of imperfect intelligence, etc"—The new method is here clearly apparent.]

3118 (return)
[ "Introduction à l'Essay sur les Moeurs: Des Sauvages."—Buffon, in "Epoques de la nature," the seventh epoch, precedes Darwin in his ideas on the modifications of the useful species of animals.]

3119 (return)
[ Voltaire, "Remarques de l'essay sur les Moeurs." "We may speak of this people in connection with theology but they are not entitled to a prominent place in history."—"Entretien entre A, B, C," the seventh.]

3120 (return)
[ Franklin defined man as a maker of tools.]

3121 (return)
[ Condorcet, "Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain."]

3122 (return)
[ Montesquieu: "Esprit des Lois," preface. "I, at first, examined men, thinking that, in this infinite diversity of laws and customs, they were not wholly governed by their fancies. I brought principles to bear and I found special cases yielding to them as if naturally, the histories of all nations being simply the result of these, each special law being connected with another law or depending on some general law."]

3123 (return)
[ Pinel, (1791), Esquirol (1838), on mental diseases.—Prochaska, Legallois (1812) and then Flourens for vivisection.—Hartley and James Mill at the end of the eighteenth century follow Condillac on the same psychological road; all contemporary psychologists have entered upon it. (Wundt, Helmholz, Fechner, in Germany, Bain, Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer and Carpenter, in England).]

3124 (return)
[ Condillac, passim, and especially in his last two works the "Logique," and the "Langue des Calculs."]