480 J. H. MUIEHEAD : of the private character of James II. and his personal friend- ship with Louis XIV. altogether inadequate. To explain this apparent contradiction he asks us to go beyond the limits of the fact as an event in English History, and to connect it with the larger whole of which it is only a part, viz., the European movement of the time in which the forces of the Counter-Reformation are headed by Louis XIV., while Protestantism is represented by William of Orange. From this point of view the English Revolution appears no longer as a constitutional change taking place in a corner of Europe caused by a petty quarrel between a Stuart and his Parlia- ment, but as an important episode in a great drama of which the chief actors are the greatest sovereign and the greatest politician and patriot of his time. By the explanation in which Seeley asks us to follow him, our knowledge is not only made more coherent ; in being made more coherent it has been made fuller. The fact reflects more of the history of the world and has thus been expanded and deepened. On the other hand every new fact we discover about a thing is a step in the direction of its explanation, for this fact on closer inspection is seen to contain a relation to other things, and thus to force us beyond the limits of the part to the whole to which it belongs and which alone can make it intelligible to us. In this way a new stage in our investiga- tion is reached, when we notice that the English Revolution is not merely a political and religious movement : it coincides with the Union of England and Scotland, the foundation of the Bank of England and the institution of the National Debt. These "facts " at once suggest a connexion with the industrial condition of the world at the time, and thus lead the way to a more comprehensive theory still of the phe- nomenon to which they belong as adjectives. III. The goal of knowledge, then, is a system of judgments or concepts, and connected in such a manner as enables us to go from any one to any other in virtue of their perceived coherence in the whole. But such a system if we could suppose it embodied in an encyclopaedic treatise would be of no interest to us except in so far as it stands related to the everyday world of our experience. We are interested, if we might say so, not in science, but in the things with which science deals ; thought and knowledge, as Mill reminds us, proceed " from particulars to particulars ". Our aim is to
