eagerly accepted.[1] I do not remember the date of Parker's acceptance, but the book had not begun to go to press in the summer months; the printing actually took place in the following winter. One of the first results of our conversations was that he gave me the manuscript to peruse. During my stay I read and discussed with him the whole of it.
The impression made upon me by the work was, as may be supposed, very profound. I knew pretty well the works that could be ranked as its precursors in inductive logic, but the difference between it and them was obviously vast. The general impression at first overpowered my critical faculties; and it was some time before I could begin to pick holes. I remember, among the first of my criticisms, remarking on the chapter on "Things denoted by Names" as not being very intelligible; I had at the same time a difficulty in seeing its place in the scheme, although I did not press this objection. The effect was that he revised the chapter, and introduced the subordinate headings, which very much lightened the burden of its natural abstruseness.
The main defect of the work, however, was in the experimental examples. I soon saw, and he felt, as much as I did, that these were too few and not unfrequently incorrect. It was on this point that I was able to render the greatest service. Circumstances had made me tolerably familiar with the experimental physics, chemistry, and physiology of that day, and I set to work to gather examples from all available sources. Liebig's books on the application of chemistry had then just appeared, and contained many new and striking facts and reasonings, which we endeavored to turn to account: although at the present day some of those inductions of his have lost their repute. An Aberdeen lecturer on chemistry, the late Dr. John Shier (chemist to the colony of Demerara) went carefully over with me all the chemical examples, and struck out various erroneous statements. I had recently made a study of Faraday's very stiff papers on electricity, and from these I extracted one generalization, somewhat modified by myself, and this Mill prized very highly; nevertheless, it was afterward carped at by Whewell, as going beyond what Faraday would have allowed. One way or other, I gave him a large stock of examples to choose from, as he revised the third book for the press. The difficulty that was most felt was to get good examples of the purely experimental methods. He had availed himself of the famous research on dew adduced by Herschel. There was hardly to be got any other example so good. For one of his later editions I gave him the example from
- ↑ So great a work can sustain even a little anecdote. Parker, in intimating bis willingness to publish the book, sent the opinion of his referee, in the writer's own hand, withholding the name. "He forgot," said Mill, "that I had been an editor, and knew the handwriting of nearly every literary man of the day." The referee was Dr. W. Cooke Taylor, who afterward was one of the reviewers of the book.
