INDUCTION. . 145 



The difficulty becomes much greater when more terms 

 enter into the combinations. It would be no easy matter 

 to point out the complete conditions fulfilled in the com- 

 binations 



ACe 



aBCe 



abCe 

 abcE. 



After some trouble the reader may discover that the 

 principal laws are C = e, and A = Ae ; but he would hardly 

 discover the remaining law, namely that BD = BDe. 



The difficulties encountered in the inductive investi- 

 gations of nature, are of an exactly similar kind. 



We seldom observe any great law in uninterrupted and 

 undisguised operation. The acuteness of Aristotle and 

 the ancient Greeks, did not enable them to detect that all 

 terrestrial bodies tend to fall towards the centre of the 

 earth. A very few nights of observation would have con- 

 vinced an astronomer viewing the solar system from its 

 centre, that the planets travelled round the sun ; but the 

 fact that our place of observation is one of the travelling 

 planets, so complicates the apparent motions of the other 

 bodies, that it required all the industry and sagacity of 

 Copernicus to prove the real simplicity of the planetary 

 system. It is the same throughout nature ; the laws may 

 be simple, but their combined effects are not simple, and 

 we have no clue to guide us through their intricacies. ' It 

 is the glory of God/ said Solomon, ' to conceal a thing, but 

 the glory of a king to search it out.' The laws of nature 

 are the invaluable secrets which God has hidden, and it is 

 the kingly prerogative of the philosopher to search them 

 out by industry and sagacity. 



