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fuller statement has been seen and weighed. And even then 
much further investigation into facts will probably be needed 
before a final decision can be made.” “ Meanwhile,” Mr. 
Warington — with, in my opinion, the extreme rashness he 
has thus very sensibly deprecated — does “ jump to a con- 
clusion," in the absence of the coming evidence, and 
“ submits that Darwinism is certainly to be maintained as 
credible ." 
I have said that I shall reverse the order, as well as endea- 
vour to negative the conclusions, of Mr. Warington' s several 
propositions. But in the first place I must touch upon his 
preliminary matter — his principles of philosophizing and the 
analogy he adduces — before entering upon the more imme- 
diate question he has brought before us. Well, Sir, here 
again, I am unfortunately at issue with Mr. Warington in some 
important respects. He appears to me to have quite thrown 
over the very principles of inductive science in his opening 
sentences. He is positively in love with hypothesis, theo- 
rizing and speculation. We need not, therefore, be surprised 
that " to love and be wise " has been beyond his power. He 
concludes that mainly, if not exclusively, “ it is through hy- 
pothesis that truth is ultimately attained ; " and not only so, 
but throwing Bacon's cautious and philosophic wisdom to 
the winds, he actually believes that we positively cannot 
collect together and store up a knowledge of the facts of 
nature, without first of all determining “ what facts especially 
need to be accumulated and sought after." This mode of col- 
lecting facts which have been sought after in order to meet 
the needs of a foregone conclusion, must remind us of the 
temple, alluded to by Bacon, in which were to be found the 
votive tablets of those who had escaped the peril of ship- 
wreck, and which were appealed to as proving the power of 
the gods to which they had been offered, but where the 
portraits of those who had perished, after making the very 
same vows, were altogether absent. (Nov. Org., i. 46.) We 
have had some experience, too, since Bacon's day, of the effect 
of this method of seeking for and tabulating facts to suit some 
favourite hypothesis. And I have sufficiently expressed my 
opinion of the vicious nature of this unphilosophical mode of 
“ going on for years collecting and arranging in the mind all 
newly-discovered facts, with sole reference, for instance, to the 
nebular hypothesis," only recently given up.* But still I agree 
with Mr. Warington to this extent, that men are prone to theo- 
rize and speculate, though in my opinion they often do so in 
* Scientia Sciential - . ; Journ. of Trans, of Viet. Inst., vol. i. p. 21. 
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