HYPOTHESES. 19 



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 

 upon 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 hypo- 

 theses. The process of tracing regularity in any com- 

 plicated and at first sight confused set of appearances, 

 is necessarily tentative : we begin by making any 

 supposition, even a false one, to see what consequences 

 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 supposi- 

 tion which accords with any of the most obvious facts, 

 is the best to'^begin with; because its consequences are 

 the most easily traced. This rude hypothesis is then 

 rudely corrected, and the operation repeated ; and the 

 comparison of the consequences deducible from the 

 corrected hypothesis, with the observed facts, suggests 

 still further correction, until the deductive results are 

 at last made to tally with the phenomena. " Some 

 fact," says M. Cornte*, "is as yet little understood, 

 or some law is unknown : we frame on the subject an 

 hypothesis as accordant as possible with the whole of 

 the data already possessed ; and the science, being 

 thus enabled to move forward freely, always ends by 

 leading to new consequences capable of observation, 

 which either confirm or refute, unequivocally, the 

 first supposition." Neither induction nor deduction, 

 he justly remarks, would enable us to understand even 



* Cours de Philosophic Positive, ii., 437- 



c 2 



