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MODERN METHODS OF SCIENCE. 585 
As has been already remarked, men are to-day just what they 
have ever been. As bright intellects and as great philosophers 
lived two or three thousand years ago as do now; their minds 
sought out the same great truths that we are searching for in 
these days, and they sought for them by the lights with which 
they were surrounded. In those earlier ages poetry, sculpture, 
architecture, and even some facts belonging to natural history 
(things that belonged either to the imagination or to the eye), 
arrived at as high a degree of perfection as perhaps they ever 
will; for the two’ senses which appreciate the ideal and the real 
were as perfect then as now. 
But when man was called upon to labor in fields where the im- 
agination and the eye aided him but little or not at all, then the 
discoveries in these fields and their interpretations call for other 
means for arriving at results. In modern days we attempt to be 
guided by the clear light of inductive reasoning which we may 
think we are employing, when too often it is the very smoky torch 
of analogy that is being used ; and this fact serves to explain why 
it is that some of the most brilliant philosophers of compara- 
tively modern days are only remembered by their names—as, for 
example the great French philosopher Descartes, whom Dugald 
Stewart Says ‘‘is much better known to the learned of our day by 
the boldness of his exploded errors than by the profound and im- 
portant truths contained in his works.” 
d such an example as this is of great value to the reflective 
mind, teaching caution, and demonstrating the fact that, while the 
Tules by which we are guided in scientific research are far in ad- 
vance of those of ancient days, we must not conclude that they 
are perfect by any means. In our modern method of investigation 
Ow Many conspicuous examples of deception we have had in pur- 
Suing even the best method of investigation! Take, for instance, 
the science of geology from the time of Werner to the present 
day. While we always thought we had the true interpretation of 
the structural phenomena of the globe as we progressed from year 
© year, yet how vastly different are our interpretations of the 
‘Present day from what they were in the time of Werner! In 
Chemistry the same thing is true. How clearly were all things 
explained to the chemist of the last century by the doctrine of 
togiston which in the present century receives no credence, while 
‘emical phenomena are now viewed in an entirely different light! 
