‘XI PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE 369 
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 window is open, and you 
observe the mark of a dirty hand on the window- 
Beate, 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 seconds 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 moment. And you will prob- _ 
“ably add, “I know there has ; I am quite sure of © 
it!” You mean to say exactly what you know; 
but in reality you are giving expression to what 
is, in all essential particulars, an hypothesis. 
You do not know it at all; it is nothing but an 
hypothesis rapidly framed in yourown mind. And 
it is an hypothesis founded on a long train of in- 
‘ductions 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 deductions, you have probably 
“arrived long before at the general law—and a 
yery good one it is—that windows do not open of 
themselves; and you therefore conclude that 
m= VOL, II BB 
