ome. The stream of life and the storm
of action, the everlasting ocean of existence, the web and the woof, and
the roaring loom of time--he gazes upon them all, and in passionate
exultation claims fellowship with the awful thing before him. But the
majestic vision fades, and a voice comes to him--'Thou art fellow with
the spirits which thy mind can grasp--not with me.'

Had Mr. Buckle tried to follow his principles into detail, it might have
fared no better with him than with 'Faust.'

What are the conditions of a science? and when may any subject be said
to enter the scientific stage? I suppose when the facts of it begin to
resolve themselves into groups; when phenomena are no longer isolated
experiences, but appear in connection and order; when, after certain
antecedents, certain consequences are uniformly seen to follow; when
facts enough have been collected to furnish a basis for conjectural
explanation, and when conjectures have so far ceased to be utterly
vague, that it is possible in some degree to foresee the future by the
help of them.

Till a subject has advanced as far as this, to speak of a science of it
is an abuse of language. It is not enough to say that there must be a
science of human things, because there is a science of all other things.
This is like saying the planets must be inhabited, because the only
planet of which we have any experience is inhabited. It may or may not
be true, but it is not a practical question; it does not affect the
practical treatment of the matter in hand.

Let us look at the history of Astronomy.

So long as sun, moon, and planets were supposed to be gods or angels; so
long as the sword of Orion was not a metaphor, but a fact, and the
groups of stars which inlaid the floor of heaven were the glittering
trophies of the loves and wars of the Pantheon, so long there was no
science of Astronomy. There was fancy, imagination, poetry, perhaps
reverence, but no science. As soon, however, as it was observed that the
stars retained their relative places--that the times of their rising and
setting varied with the seasons--that sun, moon, and planets moved among
them in a plane, and the belt of the Zodiac was marked out and divided,
then a new order of things began. Traces of the earlier stage remained
in the names of the signs and constellations, just as the Scandinavian
mythology survives now in the names of the days of the week: but for all
that, the understanding was now at w