GENERALIZA T10N. 28 1 



vain, when less will serve ; for Nature is pleased with 

 simplicity, and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes/ 

 Keill, again, lays down 11 as an axiom that ' The causes of 

 natural things are such, as are the most simple, and are 

 sufficient to explain the phenomena : for nature always 

 proceeds in the simplest and most expeditious method ; 

 because by this manner of operating the Divine Wisdom 

 displays itself the more/ If this axiom had any clear 

 grounds of truth, it would not apply to proximate laws ; 

 for even when the ultimate law may appear simple the 

 results may be infinitely diverse, as in the various elliptic, 

 hyperbolic, parabolic, or circular orbits of the heavenly 

 bodies. Simplicity is naturally agreeable to a mind of 

 very finite powers, but to an Infinite Mind everything is 

 simple. 



Every great advance in science consists in a great gene- 

 ralization, pointing out deep and subtle resemblances. 

 The Copernican system was a generalization, in that it 

 classed the earth among the planets ; it was, as Bishop 

 Wilkins expressed it, ' the discovery of a new planet,' but 

 it was opposed by a more shallow generalization. Those 

 who argued from the condition of things upon the earth's 

 surface, thought that every object must be attached to 

 and rest upon something else. Shall the earth, they said, 

 alone be free \ Accustomed to certain special results of 

 gravity they could not conceive its action under widely 

 different circumstances . No hasty thinker could seize 

 the deep analogy pointed out by Horrocks between a pen- 

 dulum and a planet, true in substance though mistaken in 

 some details. All the advances of modern science rise 

 from the conception of Galileo, that in the heavenly 

 bodies, however apparently different their condition, we 



n Keill, ' Introduction to Natural Philosophy/ p. 89. 



Jeremise Horroccii 'Opera Postlmma' (1673), pp. 26, 27. 



