ch. ix.] PHILOSOPHY AS AN ORG ANON. 241 



general — are too many of our scientific savants of the present 

 century ; whose narrowness of mind, in dealing with 

 philosophic questions, Comte was never weary of pointing 

 out and tracing to its true source in the defective mastery of 

 logical methods. The cure for this narrowness is to be found 

 in a philosophic education which shall ensure familiarity with 

 all logical methods by studying each in connection with that 

 order of phenomena with which it is most especially fitted 

 to deal. 



According to Comte, the resources which the mind has at 

 its disposal for the inductive investigation of phenomena are 

 three in number, — namely, Observation, Experiment, and 

 Comparison. Strictly speaking, experiment and comparison 

 are only more elaborate modes of observation ; but they are 

 nevertheless sufficiently distinct from simple observation to 

 make it desirable, for practical purposes, to rank them as 

 separate processes. Concisely stated, the difference is as 

 follows. In simple observation, we merely collate the 

 phenomena, as they are presented to us. In experiment, we 

 follow the Baconian rule of artificially varying the circum- 

 stances. In comparison, we watch the circumstances as they 

 are varied for us on a great scale by Nature. 



Answering to the two processes of observation and ex- 

 periment, as Mr. Mill has shown, there are two inductive 

 methods, — the Method of Agreement and the Method of 

 Difference. The former compares different instances of a 

 phenomenon, to ascertain in what respects they agree, while 

 the latter compares an instance of the occurrence of a 

 phenomenon with an instance of its non-occurrence, to 

 ascertain in what respects they differ. To cite from Mr. 

 Mill's " System of Logic " a pair of examples : — " When a 

 man is shot through the heart, it is by the method of differ- 

 ence we know that it was the gun-shot which killed him ; for 

 he was in the fulness of life immediately before, all circum- 

 stances being the same except the wound." On the other 



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