Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/116

106 learned and scientific societies, and to scientific journals, papers on the tides, beat, electricity, and magnetism; and to the literary journals and reviews miscellaneous papers on subjects literary, historical, and metaphysical. In 1828 he was appointed Professor of Mineralogy in the university. In order to perfect his knowledge of that branch of natural science, he visited Germany and spent some time at the celebrated mining-schools of Freiburg and Vienna. He resigned his mineralogical professorship in 1833; published his treatises on "Statics," "Mechanics," and "Dynamics," and brought out his first great work, entitled "Astronomy and General Physics considered in their Relations to Natural Theology." In this work Dr. Whewell breaks connection with the traditions of the experimental school, and abandons Bacon and Locke, to range himself on the side of Kant, to whose philosophy he had become a convert while in Germany. He also endeavored, during this time, to make his countrymen acquainted with German literature and art, of which he was a warm admirer. He translated several gems of German literature, such as Goethe's "Hermann und Dorothea," and "The Professor's Wife," of Auerbach, and published "Notes on the Architecture of German Churches," which met with great success in England. Among other works of less importance published soon after, his "Thoughts on the Study of Mathematics as Part of a Liberal Education," and, particularly, his "Mechanical Euclid," gained considerable note. In 1837 he published his "History of the Inductive Sciences from the Earliest to the Present Times."

Dr. Whewell's thinking now seems to enter upon the road of philosophy. During this same year he published "Four Sermons on the Foundation of Morals," and in the following year (1838) he was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy in the university. From this time forward he occupied himself almost wholly with moral questions. In 1840 he published a sequel to, or commentary on, his "History of the Inductive Sciences" under the title of "The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences," which was afterward enlarged and published as three separate works under the titles of "History of Scientific Ideas," "Novum Organon Renovatum," and "On the Philosophy of Discovery." We may add to these a fourth, "Indications of the Creator," consisting of extracts bearing upon theology, from the "History" and "Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences." In 1841 he was appointed Master of Trinity, and was President of the British Association at its meeting in Plymouth, The same year he also put out another mathematical work, entitled the "Mechanics of Engineering." In 1845 he published his "Elements of Morality, including Polity," "Lectures on Systematic Morality," "On Liberal Education in General, and with Particular Reference to the Leading Studies of the University of Cambridge." The following year he issued another mathematical work on "Conic Sections; their Principal Properties proved Geometrically." In 1852 he published "Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy in