BUFFON-FULLER QUOTATIONS. 139 



systems which we are able at a glance to detect as 

 chimeras that are being pretended to us as realities, but 

 I refer to the methods whereby people have set them- 

 selves seriously to study nature. Even the experimental 

 method itself has been more fertile of error than of 

 truth, for though it is indeed the surest, yet is it no 

 surer than the hand of him who uses it. No matter 

 how little we incline out of the straight path, we soon 

 find ourselves wandering in a sterile wilderness, where 

 we can see but a few obscure objects scattered sparsely ; 

 nevertheless we do violence to these facts and to our- 

 selves, and resemble them together on a conceit of 

 analogies and common properties amongst them. Then, 

 passing and repassing cornplaisantly over the tortuous 

 path which we have ourselves beaten, we deem the road 

 a worn one, and though it leads no whither, the world 

 follows it, adopts it, and accepts its supposed conse- 

 quences as first principles. I could show this by laying 

 bare the origin of that which goes by the name of ' prin- 

 ciple ' in all the sciences, whether abstract or natural. 

 In the case of the former, the basis of principle is 

 abstraction that is to say, one or more suppositions : 

 in that of the second, principles are but the conse- 

 quences, better or worse, of the methods which may 

 have been followed. And to speak here of anatomy 

 only, did not he who first surmounted his natural 

 repugnance and set himself to work to open a human 

 body did he not believe that through going all over it, 

 dissecting it, dividing it into all its parts, he would soon 

 learn its structure, mechanism, and functions? But 

 he found the task greater than he had expected, and 



