SECT. 4.] Objective Treatment of Logic. 269 



these hypotheses do not give much trouble on this score. 

 However vague may be the form in which they first present 

 themselves to the philosopher s mind, they have not much 

 business to come before us in our capacity of logicians until 

 they are well on their way, so to say, towards becoming 

 facts: until they are beginning to harden into that firm 

 tangible shape in which they will eventually appear. We 

 generally have some such recommendations given to us as 

 that our hypotheses shall be well-grounded and reasonable. 

 This seems only another way of telling us that however 

 freely the philosopher may make his guesses in the privacy 

 of his own study, he had better not bring them out into 

 public until they can with fair propriety be termed facts, 

 even though the name be given with some qualification, as 

 by terming them probable facts. The reason, therefore, 

 why we do not take much account of this intermediate state 

 in the hypothesis, when we are dealing with the inductive 

 processes, is that here at any rate it plays only a temporary 

 part ; its appearance in that guise is but very fugitive. If 

 the hypothesis be a sound one, it will soon take its place as 

 an admitted fact ; if not, it will soon be rejected altogether. 

 Its state as a hypothesis is not a normal one, and therefore 

 we have not much occasion to scrutinize its characteristics. 

 In so saying, it must of course be understood that we are 

 speaking as inductive logicians ; the philosopher in his work 

 shop ought, as already remarked, to be familiar enough with 

 the hypothesis in every stage of its existence from its origin ; 

 but the logician s duty is different, dealing as he does with 

 proof rather than with the processes of original investigation 

 and discovery. 



&quot;We might indeed even go further, and say that in many 

 cases the hypothesis does not present itself to the reader, 

 that is to the recipient of the knowledge, until it has ceased 



