BOOK VI. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 



REFLECTIONS ON THE RESULTS AND LIMITS OF 

 SCIENTIFIC METHOD. 



BEFORE concluding a work on the Principles of Science, 

 it will not be inappropriate to add some remarks upon 

 the limits and ultimate bearings of the knowledge which 

 we may acquire by the constant employment of scientific 

 method. All science consists, it has several times been 

 stated, in the detection of identities and uniformities in 

 the action of natural agents. The purpose of inductive 

 inquiry is to ascertain the apparent existence of necessary 

 connexion between causes and effects, the establishment 

 of natural laws. Now so far as we thus learn the in- 

 variable course of nature, the future becomes the neces- 

 sary sequel of the present, and we are brought beneath 

 the sway of powers with which nothing can interfere. 



By degrees it is found, too, that the chemistry of 

 organized substances is not widely separated from, but is 

 rather continuous with, that of earth and stones. Life 

 itself seems to be nothing but a special form of that 

 "energy which is manifested in heat and electricity and 

 mechanical force. The time may come, it almost seems, 



