992 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
prevent such an ultimate coincidence of a fact of 
nature and a scriptural truth, but the peculiar cir- 
cumstances of the two systems to which they re- 
spectively belong, it is evident that the two may , 
justly be conceived as ultimately coinciding in prin- 
ciple, since they then appear as therefore only not 
coincident actually, because their circumstances are 
not. Hence it is, that the credibility derived to the 
Scriptures from the coincidence of their doctrines 
and circumstances with the facts of nature, is that 
which belongs to the evidence of analogy. For by 
analogical reasoning we are enabled to make the 
requisite references to the circumstances by which 
a general truth may be variously modified, and to 
express the result of such references in our con- 
clusion. When we argue by induction, the con- 
clusion embraces all the circumstances belonging to 
the facts upon which our observations have been 
made. We reject and exclude all that are merely 
accidental, but we rigidly preserve in the general 
proposition every particular which appears really 
to belong to the effect produced. Whenever, there- 
fore, any circumstance really important is varied, 
our former induction fails, and we must then either 
repeat the experiment, or, if actual experiment be 
impracticable, we must have recourse to analogical 
reasoning; that is, to a mode of reasoning which 
affirms the conclusion with such reserves, such alter- 
ations, or exceptions, as may arise from any differ- 
ence in the circumstances to’which it is extended. 
Without, indeed, such a relative adaptation to the 
general truth as obtained by induction to the altered 
circumstances of the case, the inference would be 
a 
