THE QUESTION STATED 



plicated. A simple tabulation and analysis of 

 the planetary movements would never have dis- 

 closed, even to Newton's penetrating gaze, the 

 law of dynamics to which those movements con- 

 form. But in these complicated cases, where in- 

 duction has remained hopelessly embarrassed, 

 the most brilliant success has often resulted 

 from the adoption of a hypothesis by which the 

 phenomena have been deductively interpreted, 

 and which has been uniformly corroborated by 

 subsequent inductions. The essential requisite 

 in such an hypothesis is that it must have been 

 framed in rigorous conformity to the require- 

 ments of the objective method. It must be 

 based upon properties of matter or principles of 

 dynamics that have previously been established 

 or fully confirmed by induction ; it must appeal 

 to no unknown agency, nor invoke any un- 

 known attribute of matter or motion ; and it 

 must admit ultimately of inductive verification. 

 Such a hypothesis, in short, is admissible only 

 when it contains no unverifiable element. And 

 of hypotheses framed in accordance with these 

 rigorous requirements, the surest mark of gen- 

 uineness is usually that they are not only uni- 

 formly verified by the phenomena which first 

 suggested them, but also help us to the detec- 

 tion of other relations among phenomena which 

 would otherwise have remained hidden from us. 

 In conformity, then, to these requirements of 

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