54 
Blaisdell—The Methods of Science , 
principle. The more we reflect upon the matter it occurs to us 
that, while the history of the institution of the -sciences has 
been without much system, logic, holding science under the 
same law of sufficient reason, really prescribes the bounds of her 
habitation. 
A. Logic in her law of sufficient reason holds science re¬ 
sponsible for determinate fields. The history of the way in which 
the institution of the sciences has taken place, according as 
some fact has happened to strike forcibly the attention or made 
its appeal to curiosity or economical motive, almost suggests 
that historically the process has had no other direction than that 
it should go until such time as nothing more might occur to ob¬ 
servation suggestive of new fields. Or perhaps we may have set 
our limit vaguely in the thought that the splendid campaign 
would be finished only when it should come to be evident that 
the whole universe had been gone over, and, as with Alexander, 
we should be obliged to stay our footsteps for the lack of some¬ 
thing more to conquer. But it at once occurs to ask whose ob¬ 
servation is to determine that the limit of the G-anges has been 
reached. Science has seemed many times to have reached her 
outer boundary, in the history of thought, only to take consid¬ 
eration immediately for new advances. One thinks seriously 
often of what likelihood of further responsibilities for thought 
still exist for the student. You know there are many sciences 
besides those which use the senses as their instruments and 
which therefore are not so palpable. Who shall say that there 
may not be found more and more fields to conquer, climbing up 
the steeps of the universe where no discoverer’s foot hath been? 
This universe is very large, larger than our world of matter 
and our world of mind even. We cannot tell how many more 
sciences are to be constructed, whatever contracted views we 
may have of the number possible in the small territory we are 
at present occupying. And so, if any person, the man of science 
who knows most has a horizon which makes him humble. But 
there is one limit prescribed to science, and that is the one of 
the reason of things, which logic imposes as its directive to 
thought. Logic says, out of the deep mind, which is the oracle 
through which the universe reports itself to intelligence: “A 
