METHOD OF DISCOVEKY. 61 



the relations of certain phenomena, we prove that some 

 stand in the position of causes towards the others. 



I want to put the case clearly before yon, and I will 

 therefore show you what I mean by another familiar 

 example. I will suppose 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 win- 

 dow 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 minutes 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 mo- 

 ment. And you will probably add, " I know there 

 has ; I am quite sure of it ! " You mean to say exactly 

 what you know ; but in reality what you have said has 

 been the expression of what is, in all essential particu- 

 lars, a Hypothesis. You do not know it at all ; it is 

 nothing but a hypothesis rapidly framed in your own 

 mind ! And it is a hypothesis founded on a long train 

 of inductions 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 De- 

 ductions, 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 something has opened the window. A second 

 general law that you have arrived at in the same way 



