Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 24.djvu/860

840 specialists. Antagonizing established political opinion and cherished religious beliefs, it provoked the wrath of all who rest contented in tradition. Appearing in successive parts and volumes for twenty-five years, it was constantly before the public, and has been all that time subject to a degree of abuse, ridicule, and detraction, which is quite without parallel in the past history of such enterprises.

And yet during all that time Spencer's system of thought has increased in recognition, appreciation, and power over the mind of the age. Its doctrines permeate our serious literature, as is widely shown by the periodicals; many books are written for and against them; and their author stands to-day the representative man of the most influential and growing school of thought in modern times. This view is further verified by the increasing public demand for his works, more of the solid volumes of the "Synthetic Philosophy" having been called for during the last twelvemonth than in any former year. The inexorable critical resistance Spencer's works have met with has no doubt hindered their spread, but it has failed to arrest them, and has only served to test and demonstrate the inherent strength of his systematic work.

And now the sluggish old "Edinburgh Review" has at last awakened, girded itself up, and entered the lists against Mr. Spencer. The current number contains an article entitled "The Spencerian Philosophy," to which we here call attention, not because it has the slightest value as a contribution to the subject, but because we may gather from it an instructive lesson regarding the decline of the influence of vindictive criticism. It happens that the "Edinburgh Review" has a history in this matter. This is not the first time it has practiced its bludgeon upon the representatives of advancing knowledge. Let us, therefore, first notice its early record in relation to one of the most important steps in the progress of modern science—the establishment of "the undulatory theory of light" by Dr. Thomas Young. We give the "Review" full credit for consistency in an unprincipled course; the instinctive meanness of its infancy, long since execrated by the world, is not in the least abated in its senile dotage.

The "Novum Organon Renovatum" of Dr. William Whewell is an able work devoted to the philosophy of the inductive sciences, of which the same author is also the eminent historian. Dr. Whewell has selected the two most conspicuous examples of comprehensive and valid induction afforded by physical science, and by means of charts he has illustrated in a very striking way the extent of the observed and experimental facts, and the minor inductions, that are brought into unity by all-embracing theories. The first chart is an "Inductive Table of Astronomy," and it shows in a very interesting manner how completely astronomical phenomena are explained and brought into harmony by "the theory of universal gravitation." The second chart is "An Inductive Table of Optics," and in a corresponding way it exemplifies the elucidation of luminous phenomena, and the explication of general optical effects which result from "the undulatory theory of light." Whatever may be the imperfection of these theories, they have fulfilled the purposes of giving rational interpretation to wide ranges of natural phenomena, and of guiding the human mind in the pathway of new discovery by the power of prediction that they have conferred, and the two theories stand together as eminent triumphs of physical reasoning. The name of Newton will be forever associated with the law of universal gravitation, and in the same way Dr. Thomas Young will be immortal as the man whose genius established the undulatory theory of light, and who has hence been very