es with
the same degree of certainty: but at least the conditions of exact
verification should be the same, and it is necessary to see what they
are in order to see how far they can be realised.

That such was Mill's design in the main is apparent on internal
evidence, and it was the internal evidence that first struck me. But
there is external evidence as well. We may first adduce some essays
on the Spirit of the Age, published in the _Examiner_ in 1831, essays
which drew from Carlyle the exclamation, "Here is a new Mystic!" These
essays have never been republished, but they contain Mill's first
public expression of the need for a method in social inquiries. He
starts from the Platonic idea that no state can be stable in which
the judgment of the wisest in political affairs is not supreme. He
foresees danger in the prevalent anarchy of opinion. How is it to be
averted? How are men to be brought to accept loyally the judgment of
the expert in public affairs? They accept at once and without question
the decisions of the specially skilled in the physical sciences. Why
is this? For one reason, because there is complete agreement among
experts. And why is there this complete agreement? Because all accept
the same tests of truth, the same conditions of proof. Is it not
possible to obtain among political investigators similar unanimity as
to their methods of arriving at conclusions, so as to secure similar
respect for their authority?

We need not stop to ask whether this was a vain dream, and whether it
must not always be the case that to ensure confidence in a political
or moral adviser more is needed than faith in his special knowledge
and trained sagacity. Our point is that in 1831 Mill was in search
of a method of reasoning in social questions. Opportunely soon after,
early in 1832, was published Herschel's _Discourse on the Study of
Natural Philosophy_, the first attempt by an eminent man of science to
make the methods of science explicit. Mill reviewed this book in the
_Examiner_, and there returns more definitely to the quest on which
he was bent. "The uncertainty," he says, "that hangs over the very
elements of moral and social philosophy proves that the means
of arriving at the truth in those sciences are not yet properly
understood. And whither can mankind so advantageously turn, in order
to learn the proper means and to form their minds to the proper
habits, as to that branch of knowledge in which by universal