272 PREFACE TO THE 



Ptolemy or Tycho Brahe, they may nevertheless have 

 done good service in making it possible to conceive the 

 phenomena, and moreover may serve to suggest the 

 truer views by which they are to be replaced. Almost 

 any hypothesis is better than none, " citius enim," as 

 Bacon has elsewhere said, " emergit veritas ex errore 

 quam ex confusione." The wrong hypotheses doubtless 

 lead to premature speculation touching physical causes ; 

 but this is a mischief which in course of time tends to 

 correct itself, as we see in the Ptolemaic system, of 

 which the overthrow was in good measure due to the 

 cumbrous machinery of solid orbs which had been con- 

 structed to explain the motions mechanically. It came 

 to be seen that even if this system could save the phe- 

 nomena, it was unable to give a basis on which a just 

 explanation of their causes could be founded. 



I have said that almost any hypothesis is better than 

 none. But the truth is that as soon as men begin to 

 speculate at all an hypothesis of some kind or other is a 

 matter of necessity. On merely historical grounds and 

 apart from any consideration of the relation between 

 facts and ideas, questions might be propounded to a 

 writer who was trying to describe the phenomena of 

 the heavens without introducing any portion of theory, 

 to which he would not find it easy to give clear an- 

 swers. Thus we know that one of the philosophers of 

 antiquity affirmed that the sun is new every day; are 

 you prepared, we might ask, to set aside the authority 

 of Heraclitus, and to maintain your theory in opposi- 

 tion to his ? If you affirm that the sun which set last 

 night is the same as that which rose this morning, you 

 are no longer a describer of phenomena, but, like those 

 whom you condemn, a dealer in hypotheses. 



