“ Experience once recognised as the fountain of all our knowledge of Nature, it follows 
that, in the study of nature and its laws, we ought at once to make up our minds to dismiss 
as idle prejudices, or at least suspend as premature, any preconceived notion of what might, 
or w r hat ought to he, the order of Nature in any proposed case, and content ourselves with 
observing, as a plain matter of fact, what is.” — Herschell's Preliminary Discourse, p. 79. 
