DEDUCTIVE HABITS. 325 



cultivators of science, whose employment it is to 

 learn from others these general laws, and to trace, 

 combine, and apply their consequences, should 

 have no clearness of conviction or security from 

 error on this subject, beyond what belongs to 

 persons of any other class. 



This will, perhaps, become somewhat more 

 evident by considering a little more closely the 

 distinction of the two operations of discovery and 

 developement, of which we have spoken above, 

 and the tendency which the habitual prosecution 

 of them may be expected to produce in the 

 thoughts and views of the student. 



We have already endeavoured in some measure 

 to describe that which takes place when a new 

 law of nature is discovered. A number of facts 

 in which, before, order and connexion did not 

 appear at all, or appeared by partial and contra- 

 dictory glimpses, are brought into a point of 

 view in which order and connexion become their 

 essential character. It is seen that each fact is 

 but a different manifestation of the same prin- 

 ciple ; that each particular is that which it is, in 

 virtue of the same general truth. The inscription 

 is decyphered ; the enigma is guessed ; the prin- 

 ciple is understood ; the truth is enunciated. 



When this step is once made, it becomes pos- 

 sible to deduce from the truth thus established, a 

 train of consequences often in no small degree 

 long and complex. The process of making these 



