25 
elimination of the notion of will, human and Divine ; the 
factor has been differentiated out : a method has been adopted 
which does not suit the subject matter, and the induction has 
been incorrect, since, in obedience to this method, moral facts 
have been left out of consideration, because dissimilar to 
physical facts, and axioms of high probability have been 
neglected, because unlike those of positive science. 
The answers returned by the believers to the school of scien- 
tific and utilitarian sceptics have been in general based on the 
same principle. The opponents of revealed religion were for 
ever crying, “ Doubt everything ; take nothing on testimony ; 
like Pyrrho or Descartes, be prepared to doubt even your own 
existence ; forget all that you have ever accepted because you 
were told it; give up all that you have ever believed, and elabo- 
rate it over again, for acceptance or rejection; Doubt alone can 
lead you to Truth. One thing alone is true, that is, the induc- 
tive method; it is this alone by which we may escape the 
errors of the vulgar ; this alone 
>r m v 
t(JU UTOV 
yjpi)aafUvoQ S?) fSaactvto 
t7ri ruv tir'iSa/nov fyariv Ufxi. 
Our induction has overthrown the testimony to, and the testi- 
mony of, Scripture ; and so you will find it, when you have 
worked out the problem as we have.” 
“Very true,” rejoined the believer, “so far as it goes. Doubt 
and Induction are of the essence of Experimental Philosophy. 
There nothing must be taken on trust; everything must be 
verified by experiment and examination; no proposition can be 
acquiesced in relative to phenomena or phenomenal laws which 
cannot be reached as a conclusion by means of induction from 
those phenomena. But there are conditions subject to which 
your inductive method must be applied, and there are limits to 
its applicability. Evidently if a man had to doubt and examine 
into everything and take nothing on trust, he might reach the 
age of an antediluvian patriarch before he could breakfast in 
comfort, prudently plant a row of cabbages in his garden, or 
conscientiously hazard a remark about the weather. How 
many people who assent to the doctrine of the revolution of 
the earth about the sun, and habitually act upon belief of its 
truth, have worked, or can work, the simple problem of 
elliptic motion ? And it is pei’fectly clear from your own 
admission that one proposition at least is not to be attained 
inductively— namely, that which asserts the infallibility of 
induction ; or else poor man would be compelled to be per- 
petually traversing an intellectual asymptote, ever working 
