ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE LOGIC OF SCIENCE. 215 



evolved. All this rather favors the idea of a beginning than otherwise. 

 As for limits in space, we cannot be sure that we see anything outside 

 of the system of the milky-way. Minds of theological predilections 

 have therefore no need of distorting the facts to reconcile them with 

 their views. 



But the only scientific presumption is, that the unknown parts of 

 space and time are like the known parts, occupied ; that, as we see 

 cycles of life and death in all development which we can trace out to 

 the end, the same holds good in regard to solar systems ; that as enor- 

 mous distances lie between the different planets of our solar system, 

 relatively to their diameters, and as still more enormous distances lie 

 between our system relatively to its diameter and other systems, so it 

 may be supposed that other galactic clusters exist so remote from ours 

 as not to be recognized as such with certainty. I do not say that these 

 are strong inductions; I only say that they are the presumptions which, 

 in our ignorance of the facts, should be preferred to hypotheses which 

 involve conceptions of things and occurrences totally different in their 

 character from any of which we have had any experience, such as 

 disembodied spirits, the creation of matter, infringements of the laws 

 of mechanics, etc. 



The universe ought to be presumed too vast to have any char- 

 acter. When it is claimed that the arrangements of Nature are benev- 

 olent, or just, or wise, or of any other peculiar kind, we ought to be 

 prejudiced against such opinions, as being the offspring of an ill-founded 

 notion of the finitude of the world. And examination has hitherto 

 shown that such beneficences, justice, etc., are of a most limited kind 

 limited in degree and limited in range. 



In like manner, if any one claims to have discovered a plan in the 

 structure of organized beings, or a scheme in their classification, or 

 a regular arrangement among natural objects, or a system of propor- 

 tionality in the human form, or an order of development, or a corre- 

 spondence between conjunctions of the planets and human events, or a 

 significance in numbers, or a key to dreams, the first thing we have to 

 ask is whether such relations are susceptible of explanation on mechani- 

 cal principles, and if not they should be looked upon with disfavor as 

 having already a strong presumption against them ; and examination 

 has generally exploded all such theories. 



There are minds to whom every prejudice, every presumption, seems 

 unfair. It is easy to say what minds these are. They are those who 

 never have known what it is to draw a well-grounded induction, and 

 who imagine that other people's knowledge is as nebulous as their 

 own. That all science rolls upon presumption (not of a formal but of 

 a real kind) is no argument with them, because they cannot imagine 

 that there is anything solid in human knowledge. These are the people 

 who waste their time and money upon perpetual motions and other 

 such rubbish. 



