288 REASONING. 



scientific reasons for giving to every science as much 

 of the character of a Deductive Science as possible ; 

 for endeavouring to construct the science from the 

 fewest and the simplest possible inductions, and to 

 make these, by any combinations however compli- 

 cated, suffice for proving even such truths, relating 

 to complex cases, as could be proved^ if we chose, by 

 inductions from specific experience. Every branch 

 of natural philosophy was originally experimental ; 

 each generalization rested upon a special induction, 

 and was derived from its own distinct set of observa- 

 tions and experiments. From being sciences of pure 

 experiment, as the phrase is, or, to speak more cor- 

 rectly, sciences in which the reasonings consist of no 

 more than one step, and are expressed by single syllo- 

 gisms, all these sciences have become to some extent, 

 and some of them in nearly the whole of their extent, 

 sciences of pure reasoning ; whereby multitudes of 

 truths, already known by induction from as many 

 different sets of experiments, have come to be exhi- 

 bited as deductions or corollaries from inductive pro- 

 positions of a simpler and more universal character. 

 Thus mechanics, hydrostatics, optics, acoustics, and 

 thermology, have successively been rendered mathe- 

 matical ; and astronomy was brought by Newton 

 within the laws of general mechanics. Why it is that 

 the substitution of this circuitous mode of proceed- 

 ing for a process apparently much easier and more 

 natural, is held, and justly, to be the greatest triumph 

 of the investigation of nature, we are not, in this 

 stage of our inquiry, prepared to examine. But it is 

 necessary to remark, that although, by this progressive 

 transformation, all sciences tend to become more and 

 more Deductive, they are not therefore the less Induc- 

 tive ; every step in the Deduction is still an Induction. 



