The above Remarks were written before I had seen the third volume of M.
Comte's work, or the subsequent volumes. But I do not find, in anything
which those volumes contain, any ground for altering what I have
written. Indeed they are occupied altogether with subjects which do not
come within the field of my present speculations.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 247: i. p. 14.]
[Footnote 248: i. p. 7.]
[Footnote 249: _Hist. Ind. Sc._ b. xi. c. vii.]
[Footnote 250: P. 15.]
[Footnote 251: P. 16.]
[Footnote 252: M. Comte's statement is so entirely at variance with the
fact that I must quote it here. (_Phil. Pos._ vol. i. p. 705.)
"Le second théorème général de dynamique consiste dans le célèbre et
important _principe des aires_, dont le première idée est due à Kepler,
qui découvrit et démontra forte simplement cette propriété pour le cas
du mouvement d'une molecule unique, ou en d'autres terms, d'un corps
dont tous les points se meuvent identiquement. Kepler établit, par les
considérations les plus élémentaires, qui si la force accélératrice
totale dont une molecule est animée tend constamment vers un point
fixé, le rayon vecteur du mobile décrit autour de ce point des aires
égales en temps egaux, de telle sorte que l'aire décrite au bout d'un
temps quelconque croît proportionellement à ce temps. Il fit voir en
outre que réciproquement, si une semblable relation a été vérifiée
dans le mouvement d'un corps par rapport à un certain point, c'est une
preuve suffisante de l'action sur le corps d'un force dirigée sans
cesse vers ce point."
There is not a trace of the above propositions in the work _De Stellâ
Martis_, which contains Kepler's discovery of his law, nor, I am
convinced, in any other of Kepler's works. He is everywhere constant to
his conceptions of the _magnetic_ virtue residing in the sun, by means
of which the sun, revolving on his axis, carries the planets round with
him. M. Comte's statement so exactly expresses _Newton's_ propositions,
that one is led to suspect some extraordinary mistake, by which what
should have been said of the one was transferred to the other.]
[Footnote 253: Vol. ii. p. 433.]
[Footnote 254: Vol. ii. 640.]
[Footnote 255: I venture to offer this problem;--to express the
_laws of the phenomena_ of diffraction without the hypothesis of
undulations;--as a challenge to any one who holds such hypothesis to be
unphilosophical.]
[Footnote 256: ii. p. 641.]
[Footnote 257: ii. p. 673.]
[Footnote 258: _Hist. Ind. Sc._ ii. 489, b. x. c. i.]
[Footnote 259: ii. p. 561.]
[Footnote 260: i. 50.]
[Footnote 261: i. 41.]
[Footnote 262: ii. 433.]
[Footnote 263: _Phil. Pos._ ii. 392-398.]
CHAPTER XXII.
MR. MILL'S LOGIC[264].
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