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thought, is entitled to the name. It is this which until recently has

been called induction.

The application of this name to the Newtonian method increases the confusion of thought which has existed on the subject, and misleads by pushing the real induction into the background and giving its name to a complex process each of whose three subordinate processes is already known by its appropriate name, hypothesis, deduction, verification. The first is a creative act of imagination, the second is deduction and cannot at the same time be induction, and the third is observation and a comparison of what we observe with what we have deduced. Prof. Jevons regarding this process as induction, is driven to the conclusion, "If I have taken a correct view of logical method, there is really no such thing as a distinct process of induction."*

The reaction against the Baconian induction in recent scientific thought is worthy of attention. It is remarkable that it is against the induction of Lord Bacon, so long glorified as the epoch-making thought which rescued the human mind from the hypotheses and deductions of scholasticism and metaphysics, and turned it in the direction of discovery and of useful knowledge. It is remarkable that the reaction is to the methods of hypothesis and deduction, once so much under opprobrium as the methods of metaphysics that the appellation "inductive," with the Baconian meaning, was given to the physical sciences as marking their distinctive preeminence. Newton himself, with singular unconsciousness, felt obliged to utter the disclaimer, "hypotheses non fingo;" and later discoverers by the hypothetical method have apologized for its use. Since the physical sciences have claimed and do claim preeminent and even exclusive certainty and value as being founded on observation, it is remarkable that this reaction is away from this recognition of the preeminence of observation and to a depreciation of it as "idle and even radically uncertain," and of no scientific "use," except as "directed and interpreted by some theory." And it is remarkable that after all this reactionary change, scientists insist on applying the old name induction to the method of hypothesis, deduction and verification, as if fearing that the physical sciences would lose prestige if they were known to be preeminently sciences of hypothesis, deduction and verification called by their proper names. "Wide is the range of words this way and that."† .

9. Neither induction nor the hypothetical method is peculiar to investigations in physical science. Each is a method spontaneously used by the human mind in investigations in sciences of every kind and in

Princ. of Science, p. 579.

† Επέων δὲ πολὺς νομὸς ἔνθα καὶ ἐνθα. Iliad xx. 249.

the common affairs of life. Lord Bacon did not invent nor discover the method of induction. It had always been in use. He guarded the minds of men against false reasoning, turned them to the study of persons and things rather than of notions and words, and to the study of reality in its bearings on the conduct of life and the welfare of man. Newton did not discover nor first use the hypothetical method. Descartes distinctly recognizes it in his "Dissertatio de Methodo ;" and it was used in discoveries both by Lord Bacon's predecessors and successors. Lange, after noticing these facts, makes the extraordinary mistake of saying that "Newton reverted to Bacon."* The truth is that, independently of all logical theories, this method and the simple induction of Lord Bacon are the methods spontaneously used by the human mind in investigating facts, whether in science or in the practical affairs of life.

10. Correct hypotheses and the discoveries involved in them have often been suggested by genius, long before the hypotheses have been verified and the discoveries made. Very striking is Lord Bacon's anticipation of the modern discovery that heat is motion. In explaining his suggestion of this fact, he says emphatically; "it must not be thought that heat generates motion or motion heat (though in some respects this be true) but that the very essence of heat, or the substantial self (quid ipsum) of heat is motion and nothing else."† Descartes anticipated the vortex rings of Sir Wm. Thompson. Aristotle anticipated Columbus. He says that the earth must be spherical, and proves it from the tendency of things in all places downwards and from the spherical form of the earth shown in eclipses of the moon; and he argues that it is comparatively small, because in traveling north or south the position of the stars changes, and stars are seen in Greece or Cyprus, which are not seen in countries further north; and then says; "Wherefore we may judge that those persons who connect the region in the neighborhood of the pillars of Hercules with that towards India and who assert that in this way the sea is one, do not assert things very improbable."§ Anticipations of scientific discovery sometimes come from speculative philosophy. Schelling suggested the identity of the forces of magnetism, electricity, and chemical affinity; || Kant in his Naturgeschichte des Himmels anticipated the nebular theory of Laplace. Sometimes these anticipations

*Geschichte des Materialismus, i. 239, 240.

† Novum Organum, B. II. 20, Basil Montagu's Edition.

Wurtz, Atomic Theory; Cleminshaw's Trans. p. 329.

? Aristotle de Coelo, Lib. 14, Ed. Casaub. p. 290, 291, quoted Whewell Hist. of Inductive Sciences, Vol. I. p. 133.

1 Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, B. V. Chap. II. 12.

are made by poetical genius. Milton anticipated the extension of the law of attraction to the solar system:

"What if the sun

Be centre to the world; and other stars,

By his attractive virtue and their own
Incited, dance about him various rounds."

? 15. Relation of Reflective Thought to Intuition. I. Reflection or thought gives no elemental object of knowledge. The objects about which we can think are all first given in intuition.

1. This maxim is true only when intuition is understood to include sense-perception, self-consciousness and rational intuition. The maxim that all the elemental objects of thought are given in the primitive knowledge is not disputed in any school. The difference is as to the range of the primitive knowledge. If it is limited to sensible objects then thought can concern itself with these alone. If man also has intuitive knowledge of himself in his various mental acts and states, then these are legitimate objects of thought. If he has also intuitive knowledge of principles of reason asserting themselves in his consciousness and regulating all his thinking, then he must take cognizance of reason, and its fundamental realities, truth, law, perfection, worth, the absolute, as "for us"* positively known as the fundamental reality, the supreme and transcendent truth; and must connote all particular realities in their relations to these universal and all-regulative norms.

Pertinent here and profoundly significant is the seemingly playful definition which Socrates gives of thought. It is "the conversation which the soul holds with itself. The soul when thinking appears to me to be just talking; asking questions of itself and answering them."† To the empiricist thought is inspecting, weighing and measuring that which seems external to us. But in truth it is only under the regulation of the principles and laws of reason that thought can conclude in knowledge or comprehend the outward in science. Thought is "the large discourse of reason," and is fruitful only because "mind is the measure of all things." It is fruitless surveying which takes no note of the relation of the surface to the chain by which it is measured.

2. The maxim is true only of the primitive or elemental realities. These realities can be defined or described only by referring to the person's own intuitive knowledge of them; as the odor of a rose or the

"I am far from implying that a supra-sensible does not exist. I only affirm that it does not exist for us as an object of positive knowledge, though forced upon us as a negative conception." Lewes: Problems, &c., First series, Part II. Problem I. Chap. III. 26. Vol. i. 229. Vol. ii. p. 9.

†Theaetetus, 190.

taste of honey; the person's own reason, free will and affections; the primitive principles which he necessarily believes, and which regulate his thinking; power which himself exerts; bodies extended in and occupying space known by resisting his own power. Thought can create new combinations of the reality known in intuition; but it cannot put into the creation any new element of reality not intuitively known; for example, qualities of bodies which might be perceived by a sixth

sense.

II. Within these limitations knowledge is greatly enlarged by reflective thought.

Thought apprehends, differentiates and comprehends the nebulous matter given in intuition, and thus makes knowledge definite, distinct and systematic.

Thought stimulates and guides the use of our intuitive power in observation, invents instruments to aid our senses, and thus leads to the discovery of reality before unknown.

Thought gives us knowledge through general notions and language, and gives us also the sciences of grammar, philology, logic and rhetoric, which treat of thought and language.

From the forms of space and number thought develops the whole of mathematics, geometrical and arithmetical; and applying its demonstrations to nature in quantities of time and space measures everything from the action of molecules and the time of conveying sensations, to the masses and motions of planets and suns.

Thought discovers properties, laws and bodies, of the same kind with those already known, which have never been known by observation. From the knowledge of a property in a few bodies of a particular kind induction infers the existence of that property in all bodies of the same kind. From effects we infer causes; as the spectroscope reveals in the sun gold, hydrogen, and other varieties of matter well known on earth; as arrow-heads and other implements reveal the early existence of man and subvert the previous fixed belief of mankind; as fossils and strata reveal the history of the globe through strange mutations and innumerable ages before any man existed to observe them. From causes and known laws we can deduce effects and sequences. By resemblances, analogies, and a knowledge of many facts it is possible to create in imagination hypotheses; and the creations of man's imagination are found to be the same with the creations of God embodying his own ideas in nature.

Thought discovers new simple bodies which have never been observed before. Crooke observing a new line in the spectroscope affirmed the existence in the sun of an unknown metal, which was afterwards discovered on earth and named Thallium. Frankland and

Lockyer on similar evidence announced an unknown substance which they proposed to call Helium.

Thought infers and recognizes as the basis of science the existence of extra-sensible reality, of bodies so small and motions so rapid that the senses cannot perceive them; as molecules and æthers; vibrations of air so rapid that the ear cannot hear them, and of light so rapid that the eye cannot see them. It also discovers the action of gravitation, the law of which could never have been discovered by observation, which is seemingly a force exerted by a body where it is not present, which is not obstructed by interposing bodies, which seems to act instantaneously so that every body in the universe instantly takes cognizance, so to speak, of the change of position of every other body and moves accordingly, and which acting continuously is never expended, never fed, never reproduced. These and similar results are entirely beyond the range of human senses and observation, and cannot even be pictured in imagination. Some of them seem contradictory and impossible. Yet after citing some of these inferences and calculations of science, Prof. Jevons says: "We see that mere difficulties of conception must not discredit a theory which otherwise agrees with facts." But certainly if thought can establish as science results like these transcending all observation, then the hypothesis that there is a spirit in man is a legitimate hypothesis and may be established as a well-grounded basis of belief and action.

Thus thought reveals reality before unknown and enlarges knowledge. We may say that there is nothing in a woolen garment except what was first in the wool. The process of carding which separates the fibres and arranges them parallel to each other, the spinning that twists the fibres into yarn, the weaving which unites the yarn into cloth, the skill of the workman who cuts it into a garment have indeed acted only on the material that was in the wool, and yet there is very much in the garment which was not in the wool. So it is with thought. A guest in a great house rich in furniture, paintings and bric-a-brac will day after day discover previously unnoticed articles of interest which have all the time been before his eyes in the rooms. So is mankind in the universe, from generation to generation, making new discoveries of its richness. These scientific discoveries are mostly made by thought. The larger part of every science consists of facts, generalizations, laws and inferences never discovered by observation or even transcending the range of observation. Says Lewes: "We have positive proof that the sensible world comprises only a portion and an insignificant portion of existence. . . there is therefore an extrasensible existence revealed through various indications. We must ascertain how the vast outlying province of the invisible can be

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