114 INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. 



parts are only ancillary. For by them there is no building- 

 up of axioms, but only the production of simple notions 

 with an orderly narration of facts, verified, indeed, by the 

 first ministration, and so exhibited by the second, as to be, 

 so to speak, placed at our disposal. Now that ministration to 

 reason claims to be most highly approved, which shall best 

 enable reason to perform its office and secure its end. The 

 office of reason is in its nature one, in its end and use 

 double. For the end of man is either to know and con 

 template, or to act and execute. Wherefore the design of 

 human knowledge is to know the causes of a given effect 

 or quality in any object of thought. And again the design 

 of human agency is, upon a given basis of matter, to build or 

 superinduce any effect or quality within the limits of pos 

 sibility. And these designs, on a close examination and 

 just estimate, are seen to coincide. For that which in con 

 templation stands for a cause, in operation stands for a 

 mean, or instrument ; since we know by causes and operate 

 by means. And doubtless if all the means which are 

 required, to what operations soever, were supplied to man s 

 hand at pleasure, there would be no especial use in treating 

 of the two disjunctively, . But since man s operation is tied 

 up within much narrower circumscription than his know 

 ledge, because of the innumerable necessities and limitations 

 of the individual, so that for the operative part there is 

 often demanded not so much a wisdom all-comprehensive 

 and free to range, over possibility, as a judgment sagacious 

 and expert in selecting from what is immediately before us; 

 it is consistent with this, to consider these things as more 

 happily treated of apart. Wherefore we shall also make 

 like division of the ministration to reason, according as the 

 ministration is to reason active or contemplative. 



As respects the contemplative part, to say it in a word, 

 all evidently turns on one point. And that is no other 

 than this, that a true axiom be established, or the same be 

 made conjunctive with other axioms, for this is gaining 

 a portion of the solid of truth, whereas a simple notion 

 isolated, is so to speak but its surface. Now such axiom is 

 not elicited or formed, save by the legitimate and appro 

 priate forms of induction, which analyses and divides expe 

 rience, and by proper limitations and rejections conies to 

 necessary conclusions. Now the popular induction (from 

 which the proofs of principles themselves are attempted) is 

 but a puerile toy, concluding at random, and perpetually 

 in risk of being exploded by contradictory instances : inso- 



