14 HISTORY OF INDUCTIVE SCIENCES. 



consists in collecting by induction true general laws 

 from particular facts, and in combining several such 

 laws into one higher generalization, in which they 

 still retain their truth ; we might form a Chart, or 

 Table, of the progress of each science, by setting 

 down the particular facts which have thus been com- 

 bined, so as to form general truths, and by marking 

 the further union of these general truths into others 

 more comprehensive. The Table of the progress of 

 any science would thus resemble the Map of a River, 

 in which the waters from separate sources unite 

 and make rivulets, which again meet with rivulets 

 from other fountains, and thus go on forming by 

 their junction trunks of a higher and higher order. 

 The representation of the state of a science in this 

 form, would necessarily exhibit all the principal 

 doctrines of the science; for each general truth con- 

 tains the particular truths from which it was de- 

 rived, and may be followed backwards till we have 

 these before us in their separate state. And the 

 last and most advanced generalization would have, 

 in such a scheme, its proper place and the evidence 

 of its validity. Hence such an Inductive Table of 

 each science would afford a criterion of the correct- 

 ness of our distribution of the inductive Epochs, by 

 its coincidence with the views of the best judges, as 

 to the substantial contents of the science in ques- 

 tion. By forming, therefore, such Inductive Tables 

 of the principal sciences of which I have here to 

 speak, and by regulating by these tables, my views 



