64 W J MCGEE — UNIFORMITARIANISM AND DEFORMATION. 



sion in classification and in reasoning from the primitive to the more 

 highly developed. In the beginning of history men knew few facts, yet 

 they vaguely recognized many categories and speculated wildly; in the 

 beginning of empiric philosophy tlie wise men had richer store of facts 

 and fewer categories, yet in their classification they continued to seek 

 contrasts and divide by successive differences ; in the beginning of a 

 higher philosophy the learned possessed such wealth of facts that they 

 were fain to group by resemblance rather than divide by difference, to 

 infer through homology rather than analogy — and in this way science 

 was born. These stages of knowledge and of acquisitional method are 

 represented in the history of the race, in the early history of each branch 

 of science, in epitome in the intellectual growth of each individual ; and 

 the stages are none the less veritable that they overlap and interosculate 

 in endless complexity, especially in the higher part of the series. 



THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD. 



There is a fourth method of acquiring, or rather of organizing, knowl- 

 edge, which is thereby rendered scientific, namely, reasoning by identity 

 in serial succession or genesis, which may be styled (in the broader sense 

 as well as in the special sense in which the term is already used) inference 

 by homogeny. The value of homogenic inference depends on the abso- 

 luteness of the identity recognized, together with a wide variety of other 

 conditions, for this method of reasoning involves identification through 

 partial likeness or through analogic inference, as w^ell as grouping by re- 

 semblance or homologic inference. 



When the three processes of reasoning are compared it is found that 

 homogenic inference is the most highly developed. With the multipli- 

 cation of facts retention becomes more and more difficult, arrangement 

 more and more necessary ; and when the distinctions resting on the more 

 extrinsic resemblances themselves based on the simpler attributes become 

 insufficient, intrinsic relations based on the more complex attributes are 

 sought; and since the most complex attribute of things thus far known- 

 in the cosmos is serial succession, this attribute has consciously or un- 

 consciously been seized upon as a basis for the most refined classification 

 Thus homogenic inference is the legitimate offspring of homologic and 

 analogic reasoning and rises to a higher plane than either ; and the sci- 

 entific method of extending knowledge comprehends all of the empiric 

 methods, with the addition of a higher method. 



In the scientific as in the empiric knowledge, the store of facts reacts 

 on the method by which the facts are garnered, and thus the normal 

 progression in classification and reasoning is continued. In the more 

 complex branches of science acquisition began in discrimination, pro- 



