38 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



sun's atmospliere contains sodium, or that the nebula of 

 Orion contains hydrogen gas? Nineteen-twentieths of the 

 force employed in the exercise of the inductive principle, 

 which, reiterates Mr. Mozley, is "purely practical," have 

 been expended upon subjects as unpractical as these. 

 What practical interest has society in the fact that the 

 spots on the sun have a decennial period, and that when 

 a magnet is closely watched for half a century it is 

 found to perform small motions which synchronize with 

 the appearance and disappearance of the solar spots? 

 And yet, I doubt not, Sir Edward Sabine would deem 

 a life of intellectual toil amply rewarded by being privi- 

 leged to solve, at its close, these infinitesimal motions. 



The inductive principle is founded in man's desire to 

 know — a desire arising from his position among phenom- 

 ena which are reducible to order by his intellect. The 

 material universe is the complement of the intellect; and, 

 without the study of its laws, reason could never have 

 awakened to the higher forms of self-consciousness at 

 all. It is the Non-ego through and by which the Ego 

 is endowed with self -discernment. We hold it to be an 

 exercise of reason to explore the meaning of a universe to 

 which we stand in this relation, and the work we have 

 accomplished is the proper commentary on the methods 

 we have pursued. Before these methods were adopted 

 the unbridled imagination roamed through nature, put- 

 ting in the place of law the figments of superstitious 

 dread. For thousands of years witchcraft, and magic, 

 and miracles, and special providences, and Mr. Mozley's 

 "distinctive reason of man," had the world to themselves. 

 They made worse than nothing of it — worse^ I say, be- 

 cause they let and hindered those who might have made 



