[28] It would be difficult to name a man more remarkable at once for the greatness and the wide range of his mental accomplishments, than Leibnitz. Yet this eminent man gave as a reason for rejecting Newton's scheme of the solar system, that God _could not_ make a body revolve round a distant centre, unless either by some impelling mechanism, or by miracle:--"Tout ce qui n'est pas explicable" says he in a letter to the Abbé Conti, "par la nature des créatures, est miraculeux. Il ne suffit pas de dire: Dieu a fait une telle loi de nature; donc la chose est naturelle. Il faut que la loi soit exécutable par les natures des créatures. Si Dieu donnait cette loi, par exemple, à un corps libre, de tourner à l'entour d'un certain centre, _il faudrait ou qu'il y joignît d'autres corps qui par leur impulsion l'obligeassent de rester toujours dans son orbite circulaire, ou qu'il mît un ange à ses trousses, ou enfin il faudrait qu'il y concourût extraordinairement_; car naturellement il s'écartera par la tangente."--_Works of Leibnitz_, ed. Dutens, iii. 446. [29] _Novum Organum Renovatum_, pp. 32, 33. [30] _History of Scientific Ideas_, i. 264. [31] _Hist. Sc. Id._, i. 263. [32] Ibid. 240. [33] _Hist. Sc. Id._, ii. 25, 26. [34] _Phil. of Disc._, p. 339. [35] _Phil. of Disc._, p. 338. [36] Ib. p. 463. [37] _Phil. of Disc._, pp. 472, 473. [38] The _Quarterly Review_ for June 1841, contained an article of great ability on Dr. Whewell's two great works (since acknowledged and reprinted in Sir John Herschel's Essays) which maintains, on the subject of axioms, the doctrine advanced in the text, that they are generalizations from experience, and supports that opinion by a line of argument strikingly coinciding with mine. When I state that the whole of the present chapter (except the last four pages, added in the fifth edition) was written before I had seen the article, (the greater part, indeed, before it was published,) it is not my object to occupy the reader's attention with a matter so unimportant as the degree of originality which may or may not belong to any portion of my own speculations, but to obtain for an opinion which is opposed to reigning doctrines, the recommendation derived from a striking concurrence of sentiment between two inquirers entirely independent of one another. I embrace the opportunity of citing from a writer of the extensive acquirements in physical and metaphysical knowledge and the capacity of systematic thought which the article evinces, passages so remarkably in unison with my own views as the following:--