within  the  reach  of  patient  mediocrity. Thus,  when  our  men  of  sci-
ence desire  to  give  a  philosophical  appearance  to  their  narrow  spe-
cialities, they  appeal  to  Bacon  and  not  to  Descartes,  whose  scientific
character  they  depreciate ;  and  yet  the  precepts  of  Bacon  are  quite
as  hostile  as  the  conceptions  of  Descartes  to  pursuits  like  theirs,
which  are  completely  opposed  to  the  common  aim  of  the  two  great
philosophers. Important  as  were  these  two  schemes,  they  were
not  sufficient,  even  when  united,  to  constitute  the  positive  philos-
ophy. That  philosophy  had  as  yet  scarcely  touched  Physics,  and
had  not  reached  Chemistry ;  and  its  extension  to  moral  and  social
conceptions,  which  was  Bacon's  noble  aim,  was  impossible  before
the  advent  of  biological  science. The  point  of  time  was  remarka-
ble therefore  as  introducing  a  new  philosophy,  and  vaguely  disclo-
sing the  conditions  of  its  development ;  and-  all  that  the  two  great
philosophers  proposed  was  a  provisional  method,  which  might  ren-
der positive  all  the  elements  of  speculation,  in  preparation  for  an
ultimate  system,  which  they  knew  to  be  unattainable  without  such
preparation. The  transitional  state  of  the  human  mind  must  there-
fore endure  till  Chemistry  and  Biology  should  have  taken  their
places  among  the  sciences. Till  that  should  happen,  there  was
really  nothing  to  be  done  but  to  modify  once  more  the  original  sep-
aration, decreed  by  Aristotle  and  Plato,  between  natural  and  moral
philosophy,  by  bringing  each  of  them  forward  one  stage,  and  thus
showing  their  difference  to  be  more  marked  than  ever ;  for  there  is
wider  difference  when  natural  philosophy  is  in  the  positive  stage
and  moral  philosophy  in  the  metaphysical  stage,  than  when  one  was
in  the  metaphysical  and  the  other  in  the  theological. Descartes
saw  the  state  of  things  more  clearly  and  deeply  than  Bacon,  and
he  applied  himself  to  the  extension  of  positivity  to  the  utmost  limit
that  could  be  then  ventured,  even  including  it  in  the  intellectual
and  moral  study  of  animals,  under  his  famous  hypothesis  of  the
automatism  of  brutes,  thus  leaving  to  metaphysics  only  the  domain
which  could  not  be  emancipated  from  it  in  those  days — the  study
of  Man,  moral  and  social. 