124 GENERAL VIEW AND BASIS OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. 



must be. False theories often possess the external 

 appearance of truth ; tlaat of phlogiston, for example, 

 appeared to be true for a long time, because it looked 

 consistent in all its parts until it was tested by means of 

 the balance, and found erroneous. Front's hypothesis, 

 also, that the atomic weights of all the elementary sub- 

 stances were simple multiples of that of hydrogen, was a 

 false one ; but it could not be disproved until knowledge 

 had further advanced by the making of more exact- 

 experimental determinations ; it was an error of inference. 

 It was also quite an ancient error to believe that matter in 

 other parts of the universe was governed by different laws 

 to matter upon this earth. Newton's discoveries largely 

 disproved this, and spectrum analysis has confirmed his 

 inference. Many of our present beliefs will also no doubt 

 be proved to be erroneous in a similar manner by the 

 progress of verifiable knowledge. 



A very common error of unscientific minds is too 

 readily to refer phenomena to occult causes. Instead of 

 first exhausting the powers of the intellect which are 

 specially adapted and given to them to discover abstruse 

 causes and unravel complex phenomena, any circumstance 

 which they, with their finite powers, cannot at once 

 explain, they refer to a mysterious agency. Acting upon 

 this plan, ' They who have desired to find scope for the 

 display of their ingenuity in assigning causes, have had 

 recourse to a new style of argument to help them in their 

 conclusions, namely, by reduction, not to the impossible 

 or absurd, but to ignorance or the unknown, a procedure 

 which shows very plainly that there was no other course 

 open to them.' i 



The error involved in this kind of reasoning lies in 



1 Spinoza. 



