ILLUSTRATIONS OF METHOD. 
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given from the physical sciences, from medicine, and from natural 
history. 
The progressive side of knowledge was illustrated under some 
general propositions. First, truth and knowledge are easy and 
natural to man. Young minds love truth ; any single fact in 
nature, once felt, becomes a light and method to all other know- 
ledge — e.g., such facts as those of the definite proportions of Dalton, 
the oneness and harmony of terrestrial and celestial movement, the 
uniform rates of geological changes, &c, place the mind in ''rela- 
tion of circumstance" for other truths. Bacon hath it, " The mind 
of man, by nature, knoweth all things;" Harvey saw that the 
valves must be part of a system of circulating fluid ; Bell saw that 
two " affections" — motion and sensation — must have relation to the 
two series of nerves issuing out of the spinal cord ; Snow Harris 
made his ships continuous conductors ; Lyell submitted to see the 
sufficiency of present rates and powers for all geological changes ; 
Jenner saw that the human system had capacity to take on certain 
changes once only, and gave vaccination to man ; Whewell con- 
fesses that the first law of motion " might have been known to be 
true independently of experience." Many great truths and modern 
generalizations are due more to a right spirit of method than to 
experience — e.g, the theories of Dalton, Darwin, Lyell ; the dis- 
coveries of Pascal, Franklin ; the ideas of Goodsir, Virchow, &c. 
History shows method to have different stages. First, we seek 
causes, then laws, and later we submit to see relations, series, and 
uniform rates. In earlier method we see the differences only of 
phenomena ; in later, the oneness and alliances. Thus the idea of 
evolution has displaced the bad doctrine of catastrophetic pheno- 
mena and of specific differences. We now feel on an d priori 
method, that from the nebular condensation, down to the appear- 
ance of life in individual beings, all "forms" are but continued 
and latent affections, and of one great series of evolution ; the form 
of a drop of ^ rater has the same law as that of the spheres ; the 
highest animal and vegetable forms are of the same series as a 
simple cell ; languages most different are of one stock and series ; 
the student as surely feels a necessitous order and series in the 
study of languages, forms of society and government, as he does 
in purely physical phenomena. The previous series of living forms, 
and the present variety, are parts of still progressing evolution. 
There is no escape from the idea, that life and living forms are 
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