io PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



elusions, His DEDUCTIVE PROCESS was necessarily defective. 

 By itself it could at best only become a means of meta- 

 physical inquiry, but used conjointly with inductive reason- 

 ing, it ultimately became, and remained, an indispensable 

 instrument of scientific logic. 



Aristotle (384 322 B.C.) at once perceiving the in- 

 sufficiency of his master's method, which left so many 

 loopholes for error in physical inquiries, reversed Plato's 

 process, and thereby founded the scientific method of re- 

 search. This process is called the objective or INDUCTIVE 

 METHOD. The instrument by which Plato sought to arrive 

 at truth was Intellect, whereas Aristotle's was Experience. 



In his Organon (Instrument), Aristotle expounds his 

 scientific method, and declares it to consist in observation, 

 experience, and induction.* These, he says, we should per- 

 sistently pursue. The great inductive philosopher would 

 examine facts, and from facts, duly ascertained, would be led 

 to sound conclusions, and thus establish a scientific law 

 from which other phenomena or truths could be deduced 

 by Plato's process. He would, let us say, inquire into 

 the nature of the sea ; he would find that the Atlantic, the 

 Mediterranean, the Adriatic, the Euxine, the Red Sea, the 

 Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, were all of them salt water, 

 and he would, after this examination, draw the conclusion 

 that "All seas are salt." If he found a sheet of water, 

 say in Switzerland, to be fresh water, he would conclude 

 that it was not a sea. His chain of reasoning he called 

 " Syllogism ".f 



The dialectical section of the NYAYA SCHOOL had been 

 using the syllogism of GAUTAMA (died in 543 B.C.) for more 

 than two centuries before Aristotle's time. Whether the 

 Greek philosopher invented the syllogism afresh or borrowed 

 it from the Hindu school is unknown. The latter supposition 

 is quite possible, considering the intercourse between Persia 

 and India J on the one hand, and between Persia and Greece 



* See Appendix I., II. f See Appendix III. 



The Magi of Persia, whose extensive and profound knowledge of 

 philosophy was proverbial, were not likely to have been leit unacquainted 

 with the most striking features of Hindu philosophy. 



