XI PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE 369 



familiar example. I will supposa that one of you, 

 on coming down in the morning to the parlour of 

 your house, finds that a tea-pot and some spoons 

 which had been left in the room on the previous 

 evening are gone, the window is open, and you 

 observe the mark of a dirty hand on the window- 

 frame, and perhaps, in addition to that, you notice 

 the impress of a hob-nailed shoe on the gravel 

 outside. All these phenomena have struck your 

 attention instantly, and before two seconds have 

 passed you say, " Oh, somebody has broken open 

 the window, entered the room, and run off with 

 the spoons and the tea-pot ! " That speech is out 

 of your mouth in a moment. And you will prob- 

 ably add, " I know there has ; I am quite sure of 

 it ! " You mean to say exactly what you know ; 

 but in reality you are giving expression to what 

 is, in all essential particulars, an hypothesis. 

 You do not know it at all ; it is nothing but an 

 hypothesis rapidly framed in your own mind. And 

 it is an hypothesis founded on a long train of in- 

 ductions and deductions. 



What are those inductions and deductions, and 

 how have you got at this hypothesis ? You have 

 observed, in the first place, that the window is 

 open ; but by a train of reasoning involving many 

 inductions and deductions, you have probably 

 arrived long before at the general law and a 

 very good one it is that windows do not open of 

 themselves; and you therefore conclude that 



