16 



INDUCTION. 



by independent evidence. The hypothesis, by suggesting 

 observations and experiments, puts us on the road to that 

 independent evidence if it be really attainable ; and till it be 

 attained, the hypothesis ought not to count for more than a 

 conjecture. 



5. This function, however, of hypotheses, is one which 

 must be reckoned absolutely indispensable in science. When 

 Newton said, " Hypotheses non fingo," he did not mean that 

 he deprived himself of the facilities of investigation afforded 

 by assuming in the first instance what he hoped ultimately to 

 be able to prove. Without such assumptions, science could, 

 never have attained its present state : they are necessary steps 

 in the progress to something more certain ; and nearly 

 everything which is now theory was once hypothesis. Even 

 in purely experimental science, some inducement is necessary 

 for trying one experiment rather than another; and though 

 it is abstractedly possible that all the experiments which have 

 been tried, might have been produced by the mere desire to 

 ascertain what would happen in certain circumstances, without 

 any previous conjecture as to the result; yet, in point of fact, 

 those unobvious, delicate, and often cumbrous and tedious 

 processes of experiment, which have thrown most light upon 

 the general constitution of nature, would hardly ever have 

 been undertaken by the persons or at the time they were, 

 unless it had seemed to depend on them whether some general 

 doctrine or theory which had been suggested, but not yet 

 proved, should be admitted or not. If this be true even of 

 merely experimental inquiry, the conversion of experimental 

 into deductive truths could still less have been effected without 

 large temporary assistance from hypotheses. The process of 

 tracing regularity in any complicated, and at first sight con- 

 fused set of appearances, is necessarily tentative : we begin by 

 making any supposition, even a false one, to see what conse- 

 quences will follow from it ; and by observing how these differ 

 from the real phenomena, we learn what corrections to make 

 in our assumption. The simplest supposition which accords 

 with the more obvious facts, is the best to begin with ; because 



