XXXIV PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 
nomena. Phenomena imperfectly discerned are such as are com- 
bined by superficial analogies; phenomena clearly discerned are 
such as are combined by essential homologies. With all discern- 
ment, therefore, there is comparison, and comparison is reflection 
and reflection is reason. Now, scientific research is not random 
observation and comparison, but designed discernment and classifi- 
tion ; it is research for a purpose, and the purpose is the explanation 
of imperfectly discerned phenomena. Phenomena not understood, 
because imperfectly discerned and classified, are made the subject of 
examination by first inventing a hypothetic explanation of the 
same. With this, the investigator proceeds to more careful obser- 
vation and comparison, devising new methods of discrimination 
and of testing conclusions. Under the impetus of this hypothetic 
explanation, discernment and comparison proceed, and additions to 
knowledge are made thereby, and it matters not whether the hypo- 
thesis bé confirmed or overthrown. 
On this rock much research is wrecked. When an hypothesis 
gains such control over the mind that phenomena are subjectively 
discerned, that they are seen only in the light of the preconceived 
idea, then research but adds to vain speculation. A mind con- 
trolled by an hypothesis is to that extent insane; the rational mind 
is controlled only by the facts, and contradicted hypotheses vanish 
in their light. 
There is another rock on which research is wrecked—the belief 
which ofttimes takes possession of the mind that the unknown is 
unknowable, that human research can penetrate into the secrets of 
the universe no farther. It is the despondency of unrewarded 
mental toil. 
Yet another rock on which research is wrecked is the definition 
of the unknown. Phenomena appear, but whence is not discovered, 
and resort is had to verbal statement, and the verbal statement oft 
repeated comes to be held as a fact itself. This is the vice of all 
metaphysics, by which words are held to be things—spectral imagin- 
ings that haunt the minds of introverted thinkers as devils possess 
the imaginations of the depraved. 
In the midst of the sea of the unknown stand the three rocks: the 
controlling hypothesis, the unknowable unknown, and the verbal 
definition, and in the waters about them are buried many wrecks. 
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