tt A SECOND OBJECTION. 



give over the mer ? notation of numbers ; and like 

 that, in fine, which the discovery of Universal Scien- 

 tific Laws is competent to give to the human race 

 over every department of knowledge and affairs. 



36. It is, in the next place, objected, that, admitting 

 a Science of the Universe to be, in itself, possible, the 

 time has not yet arrived for it to be realized ; that 

 we can only look for its realization after the Special 

 Sciences shall have been much more numerously and 

 extensively developed ; when, in other words, the 

 human race shall have gone over the Universe much 

 more in detail than it has yet been able to do. This 

 objection has also a plausible face, but it is alike un- 

 tenable. It is indeed true, however, that, if the 

 method of arriving at the discovery of Universal 

 Laws were alone or chiefly through the necessary 

 previous exhaustion of the details, such conditions 

 would then be requisite. But the new objection is 

 only the former one re-stated, and it meets with the 

 same answer. The method of discovery is different 

 from that which the objector contemplates. As it is 

 not the detailed Facts of Being, but, on the contrary, 

 Universal Principles, which are to be discovered, so 

 also, the method of discovery is not through the in- 

 finite accumulation of details, but by Intellectual 

 Analysis, and, so to speak, by Striking at Centres. 



37. Technically speaking it is not through OBSER- 

 VATIONAL GENERALIZATIONS, but through ANALYTICAL 

 GENERALIZATIONS, that the discovery has to be made. 

 (B. O. t. 1012.) Do not be alarmed by these hard 

 terms. They express simple ideas. By Obst.rva- 



