206 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
combining the advantages of both without their 
defects; viz. by assuming, indeed, the laws we 
would discover, but altering and modifying them in 
the process of their application, so much as to make 
them agree with incontrovertible facts. 
(141.) Of these three modes of investigation, the 
first and the last are more adapted to ordinary ca- 
pacities than the second; because to conceive a 
bold and comprehensive theory, which should carry 
with it a semblance of reconciling, and reducing to 
general laws, a multitude of facts apparently ano- 
malous, requires a proficiency in science which few 
have the talent or the means to attain. ‘This ob- 
jection is applicable also, although in a less degree, 
to the third mode of investigation; for here also, as 
we are to assume certain laws, the assumption, —in 
order to wear any appearance of truth, or to raise 
in our minds any solid hope of success in working 
it out,—must be the result of much experience and 
of extensive research. He, therefore, who would 
proceed with that caution so necessary in the intri- 
cate path he has now entered upon, should either 
begin his ascent at the very lowest steps, and never 
venture forward until he has obtained a sure footing 
upon that; o. he must trust himself to the guidance, 
in the first stages of his journey, of those who are 
familiar with the road, and have already affixed 
certain landmarks sufficient to point out the direction 
heis to pursue. But to drop metaphor; the student 
must proceed on one of the following plans: — He 
must either commence, as pointed out in the first of 
these methods, by supposing no general laws have 
yet been discovered, and that he ‘may possibly find 
a re 
