92 PART II.-SOME IMPORTANT METHODOLOGICAL TERMS. 



elicits the true history of any occurrence from the involved 

 statements of one or of many witnesses: he will find that he 

 does not take all the items of evidence into his mind at once, 

 and attempt to weave them together: he extemporises, from 

 a few of the particulars, a first rude theory of the mode in 

 which the facts took place, and then looks at the other state- 

 ments one by one, to try whether they can be reconciled with 

 that provisional theory, or what alterations or additions it re- 

 quires to make it square with them." (Ibid.) In not one of 

 these instances, it will be perceived, is there a statement con- 

 cerning the precise whence of a hypothesis, i.e., as to how 

 "the first rude theory" was arrived at. 1 



If a hypothesis were a "mere supposition", "any supposition, 

 even a false one", it is impossible to calculate the number of 

 guesses we should be compelled to venture upon before stum- 

 bling on the appropriate explanation. Kepler's twenty hypo- 

 theses to account for the apparent movements of the planet 

 Mars (which he minutely studied) would become 20,000 or even 

 20,000,000 hypotheses, and nothing would be more difficult to 

 reach in any instance than the truth. 2 Yet Mill's pregnant hint 

 that happy guesses "are accidents which rarely occur to any 

 minds but those abounding in knowledge and disciplined in 

 intellectual combinations", strongly suggests that scientific train- 

 ing and conscientious and wide examination of data should 

 precede the formulation of a hypothesis. 



36. Moreover, many minds often concentrate on the pre- 

 paration of one hypothesis. A glance at the history of astronomy 

 from Copernicus to Kant, or at the evolution hypothesis from 

 Lamarck and Darwin to our day, will make this manifest; and 



1 We recognise, with Lotze, that in the process of generalisation something 

 implicit is made explicit. "In most cases what leads us to make the deduction 

 is that a number of individual perceptions Si M, s 2 M, 83 M, thrust themselves 

 one after another on our notice, so waking in us the suspicion that the 

 ground of M is universally to be found in the nature of s, in various examples 

 of which we observe it." (Logic, vol. 2, p. 32.) On the other hand, Miss 

 Naden echoes Mill's condemnation of Bacon: "That hasty flight of the mind 

 from particulars to the highest generalisations, which he regards as funda- 

 mentally unscientific, is the necessary preliminary of investigation." (In- 

 duction and Deduction, p. 44.) And yet she admits that "a hypothesis never 

 comes into being without some preliminary induction; rude indeed and 

 imperfect, but as a rule clearly traceable". (Ibid., p. 69.) 



2 "If Kepler had not known the geometry of conic sections, and had not 

 had in his mind the attributes of the ellipse as proceeding from purely 

 geometrical considerations, to serve as major premises for his calculations, 

 he would never have discovered his first law." (Sigwart, Logic, vol. 2, 

 ]>. 275.) And it might be added that if he had not had many facts at his 

 disposal, it would have been a pure miracle for him to have guessed that 

 the squares of the periodic times of the several planets are proportionate 

 to the cubes of their mean distance from the sun. We may also remark 

 in this connection that he made a life study of the motions of the planets, 

 and that he utilised the imposing collection of facts bequeathed him by 

 Tvcho Brahe. 



