8 INDUCTION. 



as for instance to the propagation of light, sound, 

 heat, electricity, &c., through space, or any of the 

 other phenomena which have been found susceptible 

 of explanation by the resolution of their observed laws 

 into more general laws. Enough has been said to 

 display the difference between the kind of explanation 

 and resolution of laws which is chimerical, and that of 

 which the accomplishment is the great aim of philo- 

 sophy; and to show into what sort of elements the 

 resolution must be effected, if at all. 



3. As, however, there is scarcely any of the 

 principles of a true method of philosophizing which 

 does not require to be guarded against errors on both 

 sides, I must enter a caveat against another misappre- 

 hension, of a kind directly contrary to the preceding, 

 and against which there is the more necessity to be on 

 our guard, as it has the appearance of being counte- 

 nanced (for I am persuaded that it is only the appear- 

 ance) by so great a thinker as M. Auguste Comte. 

 That philosopher, among other occasions on which he 

 has condemned, with some asperity, any attempt to 

 explain phenomena which are " evidently primordial" 

 (meaning, apparently, no more than that every such 

 phenomenon must have at least one peculiar and inex- 

 plicable law,) has spoken of the attempt to furnish any 

 explanation of the colour belonging to each substance, 

 "lacouleur elementaire propre a chaque substance," 

 as essentially illusory. " No one," says he, "in our 

 time, attempts to explain the particular specific gra- 

 vity of each substance or of each structure. Why 

 should it be otherwise as to the specific colour, the 

 notion -of which is undoubtedly no less primordial*?" 



* Cours de Philosophic Positive^ ii. 656. 



