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 

 he is 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 



