INDUCTIVE HABITS. 305 



attains to the perception of a law previously un- 

 known, connecting the appearances which he 

 has studied. A mass of facts which before 

 seemed incoherent and unmeaning, assume, on a 

 sudden, the aspect of connexion and intelligible 

 order. Thus, when Kepler discovered the law 

 which connects the periodic times with the 

 diameters of the planetary orbits ; or, when 

 Newton showed how this and all other known 

 mathematical properties of the solar system were 

 included in the law of universal gravitation ac- 

 cording to the inverse square of the distance ; 

 particular circumstances which, before, were 

 merely matter of independent record, became, 

 from that time, indissolubly conjoined by the laws 

 so discovered. The separate occurrences and 

 facts, which might hitherto have seemed casual 

 and without reason, were now seen to be all ex- 

 emplifications of the same truth. The change is 

 like that which takes place when we attempt to 

 read a sentence written in difficult or imperfect 

 characters. For a time the separate parts ap- 

 pear to be disjoined and arbitrary marks ; the 

 suggestions of possible meanings, which succeed 

 each other in the mind, fail, as fast as they are 

 tried, in combining or accounting for these sym- 

 bols : but at last the true supposition occurs ; 

 some words are found to coincide with the mean- 

 ing thus assumed ; the whole line of letters ap- 

 pear to take definite shapes and to leap into 



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