(print) xx, 282 p. : ill. ; 24 cm

Acknowledgments ix -- Preface xi -- Prelude. Polarities : Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Theory of Life (1817-1818) as Victorian Cosmology 2 -- ONE Foundations : John Stuart Mill and Auguste Comte 24 -- I. Universal Causation—John Stuart Mill : A System of Logic (1843) 25 -- II. The Positive Plan—Auguste Comte : Cours de philosophie positive (1830-1842) 39 -- TWO Applied Science—Phrenology and Evolution : George Combe and Robert Chambers 58 -- I. A "Positive Psychology" 59 -- II. The Third Apostle and His Two Gospels—George Combe : The Constitution of Man in Relation to External Objects (1835) 71 -- III. More Than Metaphor : Phrenology -- as Mental Geology 83 IV. "One Majestic Whole"—Robert Chambers : Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844) 9 -- THREE New Faiths—The Philosophy of Necessity, "Force," and Mesmerism : Charles Bray and Harriet Martineau 110 -- I. Necessity : Victorian Headaches and Eighteenth-Century Optimism 111 -- II. The Rational Romantic—Charles Bray : The Philosophy of Necessity : or, the Law of Consequences; as Applicable to Mental, Moral, and Social Science (1841) 122 -- III. Mind Over Matter : "Force" and the Mesmeric Mania 132 -- IV. Materialism and Spiritualism—Harriet Martineau and Henry George Atkinson : Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development (1851) 141 -- FOUR Synthetic Philosophy : George Henry Lewes and Herbert Spencer 164 -- I. The Heart and the Brain—George Henry Lewes : "Spinoza's Life and Works" (1843) 165 -- II. The Foundations of a Friendship—Herbert Spencer : Social Statics (1851) 178 -- III. Statics and Dynamics— Transcendental Anatomy and the Development Hypothesis—Spencer and Lewes : Essays, 1851-1857 190 -- IV. Life and Mind—Herbert Spencer : The Principles of Psychology (1855) 201 -- V. The Knowable and the Unknowable—Herbert Spencer : "Progress : Its Law and Cause" (1857) 210 -- Finale. "The Many in the One, the One in the Many" : George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871-1872) as Victorian Cosmology 232 -- I. Borthrop Trumbull's Auction 233 -- II. A Victorian Sensibility : the Poetry of the Real 237 -- III. Building a Novel : the Part and the Whole 246 -- Bibliography 267 -- Index 275