aG INTERPRETATIONS OF NATURE. 
If, in its self-asserting pride, the human mind has, at 
times, closed the avenues of the senses, through which 
the physical world becomes known, and, as a result of 
the abuse of the deductive method, declared that the 
earth rests upon the back of a turtle; that, in the begin- 
ning, all life forms sprang from nothing into perfect 
being ; that the ocean’s tides are but the breathings of 
the live monster-earth ; that comets are heralds of di- 
vine wrath to an impenitent world ; that eclipses are ex- 
pressions of nature’s grief because of some human ca- 
lamity ; and that no steam vessel could ever cross the 
Atlantic—if such gross errors are to be ascribed to the 
deductive method, it is, likewise, true that the path of 
inductive reasoning is strewn with the wrecks of dis- 
carded theories, imperfect observations, and erroneous 
interpretations of facts in nature. 
When inductive science, exulting in its brilliant 
achievements, points to the starry heavens and tells the 
_ revelations it has made, it remains for the deductive rea- 
soning of Newton to declare the universal law of gravi- 
tation, by which atoms aggregate to suns and worlds 
are held in their orbits. If the telescope of Herschel dis- 
covered the planet Uranus, it was, nevertheless, the cal- 
culating, deductive reasoning of Leverrier that located 
Neptune far beyond. Inductive science may, by means 
of the spectroscope, read in the rays of light the history 
of the stars, but it was the glory of Laplace to proclaim 
—through deductive reasoning—the laws of cosmic evo- 
lution, and to trace the changing forms of matter from 
the glowing vapor to a solid world. Inductive science 
may justly claim high honor for many and marvelous 
discoveries in the domain of organic nature, but the 
grand generalization of life phenomena, under the for- 
mulated laws of biological development, is a masterly 
deduction from inductive facts. 
Scientific methods are largely inductive, and apply to 
