484 On Scientific Method. [October, 
they demand in others. To quote the words of Charles 
Kingsley : — “ There is a scientific reverence, a reverence of 
courage, which is surely one of the highest forms of re- 
verence, that, namely, which so reveres every facft that it 
dare not overlook or falsify it, seem it never so minute ; which 
feels that because it is a fadt it cannot be minute, cannot be un- 
important ; . . . and which therefore, just because it stands in 
solemn awe of such paltry fadts as the Scolopax feather in a 
snipe’s pinion, or the jagged leaves which appear capriciously 
in certain honeysuckles, believes that there is likely to be 
some deep and wide secret underlying them which is worth 
years of thought to solve. But as for that other reverence 
which shuts its eyes and ears in pious awe . . . what is it 
but cowardice, very pitiable when unmasked ; and what is 
its child but ignorance, as pitiable, which would be ludicrous 
were it not so injurious?”* 
To return to the main subject. We wish for hypotheses 
which shall explain our observed or experimentally deter- 
mined fadts. If we are determined to do without hypotheses 
in our scientific method, let us see what is required of us. 
Given two circumstances, and one hundred other distinct: 
circumstances which may possibly be connected with these, 
we are required to find, by mere indudtive reasoning, the law 
regulating the coincidences existing between these circum- 
stances. Now there are no less than 4950 pairs of cir- 
cumstances, under the conditions just named, between which 
a coincidence may exist. We shall therefore be required to 
try these 4950 cases, in order to determine which of them 
represents the true grouping of the connedted circumstances. 
Would it not be easier, after attentively looking at all the 
circumstances, to say, probably the coincidence lies here, and 
then try whether it does or not ? 
As an illustration of the vast number of combinations 
possible under certain circumstances the following is in- 
structive : — In whist, four hands of thirteen cards each are 
simultaneously held : “ The number of distindt possible 
deals is so great that twenty-eight figures are required to 
express them. If the whole population of the world — say a 
hundred thousand million persons — were to deal cards day 
and night for one hundred million years, they would not have 
exhausted in this time one one-hundred-thousandth part of 
the possible deals. ”t If we do not know anything of hypo- 
theses, do not hazard at the least a guess, we shall very 
* “ Science.” A Ledture delivered at the Royal Institution. 
f Essay on Probability, by Lubbock and Drinkwater, quoted by Jevons, 
Principles of Science, vol. i., p. 217. 
