what particular causes must conspire to produce such or such an effect, it follows, that nothing can become known to us as a cause except in and through its effect; in other words, that we can only attain to the knowledge of a cause by extracting it out of its effect. To take the example, we formerly employed, of a neutral salt. This, as I observed, was made up by the conjunction of three proximate causes, viz. an acid, an alkali,and the force which brought the alkali and the acid into the requisite approximation. This last, as a transitory condition, and not always the same, we shall throw out of account. Now, though we might know the acid and the alkali in themselves as distinct phænomena, we could never know them as the concurrent causes of the salt, unless we had known the salt as their effect. And though, in this example, it happens that we are able to compose the effect by the union of its causes, and to decompose it by their separation, - this is only an accidental circumstance; for the far greater number of the objects presented to our observation, can only be decomposed, but not actually recomposed, and in those which can be recomposed, this possibility is itself only the result of a knowledge of the causes previously obtained by an original decomposition of the effect.

Analysis.

In so far, therefore, as philosophy is the research of causes, the one necessary condition of its possibility is the decomposition of effects into their constituted causes. This is the fundamental procedure of philosophy, and is called by a Greek term Analysis. But though analysis be the fundamental procedure, it is still only a mean towards an end. We analyze only that we may comprehend; and we comprehend only inasmuch as we are able to reconstruct in thought the complex effects which we have analyzed into their elements. This mental reconstruction is, therefore, the final, the consummative procedure of philosophy, and it is familiarly known by the Greek term Synthesis. Analysis and synthesis, though commonly treated as two different methods, are, if properly understood, only the two necessary parts of the same method. Each is the relative and the correlative of the other. Analysis, without a subsequent synthesis, is incomplete; it is a mean cut off from its end. Synthesis, without a previous analysis, is baseless; for synthesis receives from analysis the elements which it recomposes. And, as synthesis supposes analysis as the prerequisite of its possibility, so it is also dependent on analysis for the qualities of its existence. The value of every synthesis' depends upon the value of the foregoing analysis. If the precedent

Synthesis.

-

analysis afford false elements, the subsequent synthesis of these elements will necessarily afford a false result. If the elements furnished by analysis are assumed, and not really discovered, —in other words, if they be hypothetical, the synthesis of these hypothetical elements will constitute only a conjectural theory. The legitimacy of every synthesis is thus necessarily dependent on the legitimacy of the analysis which it pre-supposes, and on which it founds.

Constitute a single

method.

These two relative procedures are thus equally necessary to each other. On the one hand, analysis without synthesis affords only a commenced, only an incomplete, knowledge. On the other, synthesis without analysis is a false knowledge,- that is, no knowledge at all. Both, therefore, are absolutely necessary to philosophy, and both are, in philosophy, as much parts of the same method as, in the animal body, inspiration and expiration are of the same vital function. But though these operations are each requisite to the other, yet were we to distinguish and compare what ought only to be considered as conjoined, it is to analysis that the preference must be accorded. An analysis is always valuable; for though now without a synthesis, this synthesis may at any time be added; whereas a synthesis without a previous analysis is radically and ab initio null.

So far, therefore, as regards the first end of philosophy, or the discovery of causes, it appears that there is only one possible method, that method of which analysis is the foundation, synthesis the completion. In the second place, considering philosophy in relation to its second end, the carrying up our knowledge into unity, the same is equally apparent.

Everything presented to our observation, whether external or

Only one possible method shown in relation to the second end of Philosophy.

internal, whether through sense or self-consciousness, is presented in complexity. Through sense, the objects crowd upon the mind in multitudes, and each separate individual of these multitudes is itself a congeries of many various qualities. The same is the case with the phænomena of self-consciousness. Every modification of mind is a complex state; and the different elements of each state, manifest themselves only in and through each other. Thus, nothing but multiplicity is ever presented to our observation; and yet our faculties are so limited that they are able to comprehend at once only the very simplest conjunctions. There seems, therefore, a singular disproportion between our powers of knowledge and the objects to be known.

How is the equilibrium to be restored? This is the great problem proposed by nature, and which analysis and synthesis, in combination, enable us to solve. For example, I perceive a tree, among other objects of an extensive landscape, and I wish to obtain a full and distinct conception of that tree. What ought I to do? Divide et impera: I must attend to it by itself, that is, to the exclusion of the other constituents of the scene before me. I thus analyze that scene; I separate a petty portion of it from the rest, in order to consider that portion apart. But this is not enough, the tree itself is not a unity, but, on the contrary, a complex assemblage of elements, far beyond what my powers can master at once. I must carry my analysis still farther. Accordingly, I consider successively its height, its breadth, its shape; I then proceed to its trunk, rise from that to its branches, and follow out its different ramifications; I now fix my attention on the leaves, and severally examine their form, color, etc. It is only after having thus, by analysis, detached all these parts, in order to deal with them one by one, that I am able, by reversing the process, fully to comprehend them again in a series of synthetic acts. By synthesis, rising from the ultimate analysis step by step, I view the parts in relation to each other, and, finally, to the whole of which they are the constituents; I reconstruct them; and it is only through these two counter-processes of analysis and synthesis that I am able to convert the confused perception of the tree, which I obtained at first sight, into a clear, and distinct, and comprehensive knowledge.1

But if analysis and synthesis be required to afford us a perfect knowledge even of one individual object of sense, still more are they required to enable the mind to reduce an indefinite multitude of objects, the infinitude, we may say, of nature, to the limits of its own finite comprehension. To accomplish this, it is requisite to extract the one out of the many, and thus to recall multitude to unity, confusion to order. And how is this performed? The one in the many being that in which a plurality of objects agree,or that in which they may be considered as the same; and the agreement of objects in any common quality being discoverable only by an observation and comparison of the objects themselves, it follows that a knowledge of the one can only be evolved out of a foregoing knowledge of the many. But this evolution can only be accomplished by an analysis and a synthesis. By analysis, from the infinity of objects presented to our observation, we select some. These we consider apart, and, further, only in certain points of

1 [On the subject of analysis and synthesis, compare Condillac, Logique, cc. i. ii.]

view, and we compare these objects with others also considered in the same points of view. So far the procedure is analytic. Having discovered, however, by this observation and comparison, that certain objects agree in certain respects, we generalize the qualities in which they coincide, that is, from a certain number of individual instances we infer a general law; we perform what is called an act of Induction. This induction is erroneously viewed as analytic; it is purely a For example, from our experience,

Induction.

synthetic process. and all experience, be it that of the individual or of mankind, is only finite, from our limited experience, I say, that bodies, as observed by us, attract each other, we infer by induction the unlimited conclusion that all bodies gravitate towards each other. Now, here the consequent contains much more than was contained in the antecedent. Experience, the antecedent, only says, and only can say, this, that, and the other body gravitate, (that is, some bodies gravitate); the consequent educed from that antecedent, says,all bodies gravitate. The antecedent is limited, -the consequent unlimited. Something, therefore, has been added to the antecedent in order to legitimate the inference, if we are not to hold the consequent itself as absurd; for, as you will hereafter learn, no conclusion must contain more than was contained in the premises from which it is drawn. What then is the something? If we consider the inductive process, this will be at once apparent.

The affirmation, this, that, and the other, body gravitate, is connected with the affirmation, all bodies gravitate, only by inserting between the two a third affirmation, by which the two other affirmations are connected into reason and consequent, — that is, into a logical cause and effect. What that is I shall explain. All scientific induction is founded on the presumption that nature is uniform in her operations. Of the ground and origin of this presumption, I am not now to speak. I shall only say, that, as it is a principle which we suppose in all our inductions, it cannot be itself a product of induction. It is, therefore, interpolated in the inductive reasoning by the mind itself. In our example the reasoning will, accordingly, run as follows:

This, that, and the other body, (some bodies,) are observed to gravitate;

1 It may be considered as the one or the other, according as the whole and its parts are viewed in the relations of comprehension or of extension. The latter, however, is the

simpler and more convenient point of view: and in this respect Induction is properly synthetic. See the Author's Discussions, p. 173. -ED.

But, (as nature is uniform in her operations,) this, that, and the other body, (some bodies,) represent all bodies,

Therefore all bodies gravitate.

Now, in this and other examples of induction, it is the mind which binds up the separate substances observed and collected into a whole, and converts what is only the observation of many particulars into a universal law. This procedure is manifestly synthetic.

Now, you will remark that analysis and synthesis are here absolutely dependent on each other. The previous observation and comparison, the analytic foundation, are only instituted for the sake of the subsequent induction, the synthetic consummation. What boots it to observe and to compare, if the uniformities we discover among objects are never generalized into laws? We have obtained an historical, but not a philosophical knowledge. Here, therefore, analysis without synthesis is incomplete. On the other hand, an induction which does not proceed upon a competent enumeration of particulars, is either doubtful, improbable, or null; for all synthesis is dependent on a foregone analysis for whatever degree of certainty it may pretend to. Thus, considering philosophy in relation to its second end, unity or system, it is manifest that the method by which it accomplishes that end, is a method involving both an analytic and a synthetic process.

Now, as philosophy has only one possible method, so the History of philosophy only manifests the conditions of this one method, more or less accurately fulfilled. There are aberrations in the method, no aberrations from it.

The history of philosophy manifests the more or less accurate fulfilment of the conditions of the one Method.

Earliest problem of philosophy.

"Philosophy commenced with the first act of reflection on the objects of sense or self-consciousness, for the purpose of explaining them. And with that first act of reflection, the method of philosophy began, in its application of an analysis, and in its application of a synthesis, to its object. The first philosophers naturally endeavored to explain the enigma of external nature. The magnificent spectacle of the material universe, and the marvellous demonstrations of power and wisdom which it everywhere exhibited, were the objects which called forth the earliest efforts of speculation. Philosophy was thus, at its commencement, physical, not psychological; it was not the problem of the soul, but the problem of the world, which it first attempted to solve.

"And what was the procedure of philosophy in its solution of this problem? Did it first decompose the whole into its parts, in