XXX PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 
molecular condition and derives from it the more compounded ag- 
gregates and their motions, in obedience to the law of the persis- 
tence of motion, which is the kinematic hypothesis. Thus there are 
bodies of men engaged in researches relating to molecular physics, 
other bodies of men in researches relating to molecular physics and 
astronomy, and others in molecular physics and chemistry, all of 
whose researches converge in the kinematic hypothesis. It is there- 
fore reached by a consilience of many inductive methods. 
In the statement thus made concerning the kinematic theory 
there is no attempt to assemble the data on which it rests. Such 
task could not be performed in an address, as volumes would be 
~ needed for their presentation. An attempt has been made simply 
to characterize the processes of inductive reasoning by which the 
hypothesis is reached. 
If the kinematic hypothesis should be demonstrated, it would be 
a veritable explanation. The dynamic hypothesis is no explana- 
tion. To exhibit this fact it must be briefly analyzed. 
Philosophy is the science of opinion, and the philosopher has for 
the subject-matter of his science the origin and nature of opinions, 
and he discovers that they may be broadly grouped in three classes— 
mythic, metaphysic, and scientific. Mythic opinion arises from the 
attempt to explain the simple in terms of the compound—that is, 
to explain biotic and physical phenomena by their crude analogies 
to human activities. Early man, discovering that his own activi- 
ties arose from design and will, supposed that there was design and 
will in all function and motion. Through this method of explana- 
tion have arisen the mythologies of the world. 
But in the early civilization of the Aryan race a multitude of 
mythic systems were thrown together and studied by the same body 
of men, originally for the purpose of deriving therefrom the com- 
mon truth. The resulting comparison and investigation led to the 
conclusion that they were all false, and in lieu thereof a new system 
of explanation was invented. These earlier philosophers of the 
cities of the Mediterranean, while engaged in the comparison of 
mythologies, were also engaged in the comparison of languages, and 
they discovered many profoundly interesting facts of linguistic 
structure, and the intimate relations between language and thought 
by which the form of thought itself is moulded. These great 
facts appearing at the same time that mythic philosophy was dis- 
