INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION. 267 



by testing- aud improving, what is false, and detect the parts which are 

 wanting to complete the idea submitted to examination. The idea from 

 which they set out is not nnfrequently wholly false, and the true is first 

 sprung in the course of the investigation. Hence, the doctrine of many 

 of the greatest inquirers that the labor is everything, and that any 

 theory may lead to truth, provided it gives the impulse to toil. 



In deductive inquiry, it is the conviction of the correctness of a con- 

 cluding idea {scMuss-idee) which stimulates the understanding of the in- 

 quirer to its appropriate activity ; aud so with the experimental arti- 

 ficer, the conviction of the existence of a thing is the first and most 

 efficacious incitement to the movements of the imaginative power ; the 

 discovery of a new fact or reaction, to which the idea of something 

 before unknown, something useful or important for industry or life, at- 

 taches, is sufficient to awaken the conviction of its existence in many 

 individuals, and it not nnfrequently happens that it is in reality simul- 

 taneously discovered by several. 



Understanding and imagination are alike necessary to our knowledge, 

 and in science are alike authorized ; they both have an allotted part in 

 all x>roblems of physics and chemistry, of medicine, of public economy, 

 history and philology, and comprise each a certain space in its appro- 

 priate province. The part in which the imaginative faculty bears sway 

 is proportionately wider and more comprehensive, as the positive knowl- 

 edge with which the understanding circumscribes it is more indetermi- 

 nate and indistinct. Progress consists in this, that with the increase 

 of knowledge, the conceptions which have sprung from the imagination 

 vanish, and while in the first periods of science this faculty had undis- 

 puted ascendancy, at a later stage it subordinates itself to the under- 

 standing and becomes to the latter a helpful and willing servant. 



Induction under the guidance of the imagination is intuitive and cre- 

 ative, but vague and extravagant ; deduction under the guidance of the 

 understanding analyzes and limits, and is definite and measurable. 



Oue of the most essential characters of deductive inquiry in science 

 is measure, and the ultimate aim of all its labors is directed to an unal- 

 terable numerical expression for the properties of things, for processes 

 and phenomena. Imagination compares and discriminates, but meas- 

 ures not, for measurement implies a scale, and that is a product of the 

 understanding. 



By the introduction of science into an art accrues an advantage, 

 scarcely enough aj)preciated ; that science abolishes art as such, aud 

 what is individual in it, while resolving' it into rules which may be 

 taught and learned ; through a knowledge of which rules even the un- 

 proficient in business, industry, husbandry, and technics, is invested 

 with the power of the most proficient, most skillful, and most experi- 

 enced i)ractitioner, who attains his aims by the shortest, surest, and 

 most economical means. What before was jiroper to the individual be- 

 becomes thenceforth the joint property of all. 



