PRINCIPLES OF SCIENCE. 



Had he been desirous of appealing to expe- 

 riment alone, he would have excluded the facts 

 which are the result of simple observation only. 

 If such had been his principles of learning, it 

 would have led, (as it has been well observed,) 

 to the unwarrantable length of supposing, that 

 knowledge could only be obtained through an 

 artificial, rather than through ^natural channel. 

 Assisted by the furnace and the crucible in the 

 laboratory, we should have been forced not to 

 use our eyes, unless with a candle in our hands 

 and spectacles on our nose and to withdraw 

 our senses from the knowledge which they con- 

 vey to the mind, of the undisturbed appearances 

 of nature. 



Instead, however, of appealing to simple ob- 

 servation for the apprehension of natural phe- 

 nomena, few phenomena are, at this time, sup- 

 posed or admitted to be true, unless proved by 

 the test of experiment ; unnatural effects are 

 generally preferred to those which are natural 

 and unsophisticated. The phenomena of dis. 

 ease are adduced to explain the actions of 

 health ; the chemical changes which dead and 

 common matter undergo, are often assumed to 

 account for the causes and phenomena of life. 



To the late MR. J. HUNTER, to DR. GOOD- 

 WIN, SPALLANZANI, and a few others, we are 

 eminently indebted for many valuable facts ob- 

 tained through the medium of experiments per- 



