DISCOURSE ON METHOD. 69 



ample and vast, and these principles so simple and 

 general, that I have hardly observed a single par- 

 ticular effect which I cannot at once recognise as 

 capable of being deduced in many different modes 

 from the principles, and that my greatest difficulty 

 usually is to discover in which of these modes the 

 effect is dependent upon them ; for out of this diffi- 

 culty I cannot otherwise extricate myself than by 

 again seeking certain experiments, which may be 

 such that their result is not the same, if it is in the 

 one of these modes that we must explain it, as it 

 would be if it were to be explained in the other. As 

 to what remains, I am now in a position to discern, as 

 I think, with sufficient clearness what course must 

 be taken to make the majority of those experiments 

 which may conduce to this end : but I perceive like- 

 wise that they are such and so numerous, that 

 neither my hands nor my income, though it were a 

 thousand times larger than it is, would be sufficient 

 for them all; so that, according as henceforward I 

 shall have the means of making more or fewer 

 experiments, I shall in the same proportion make 

 greater or less progress in the knowledge of nature. 

 This was what I had hoped to make known by the 

 Treatise I had written, and so clearly to exhibit the 

 advantage that would thence accrue to the public, 

 as to induce all who have the common good of man 

 at heart, that is, all who are virtuous in truth, and 

 not merely in appearance, or according to opinion, 

 as well to communicate to me the experiments they 

 had already made, as to assist me in those that 

 remain to be made. 



