A Logic Of Facts

, vol 1,

em, pp

tures to the Working

f Campbe

The imagination may be defined to be the use which reason makes of the material world. Shakspere's imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand, to embody any

n was ever a great poet without having it in excess, and after a century or two, men become convinced of it. They jump the middle terms of

reby, without permission of the line-and-rule men, we join strange things together, and to the surprise of every body, the junction is a happy one. 'Angelo's greatness lay in searching for untried existence.'** But observation primarily suggests t

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says Steevens, that these words are merely technical. A woodman, butcher, and dealer in skewers, lately observed to him, that his nephew (an idle lad), could only assist in making them; he could rough-hew them, but I was obliged to shape their ends. To shape the ends of wood skewers, i. e., to point them, requires a degree of skill: any one can rough-hew them. Whoever recollects the profession of Shakspere's father, will admit that his son might be no stranger to such terms. I have frequently seen pac

from their coherence with the instincts of sensation, 'Poetry, we grant, creates a world of its own; but it creates it out of existing materials.' 'Imagination' may be but 'thought on fire,' but the spark, which ignites it, is material. Is there any ot

on observation is the observation of the phenomena we find. Experiment is observation of the phenomena we bring together. Experimental observation has been the great agent of modern discovery. Newton ranked it as the most valuable knowledge. Whatever is not founded on phenomena is hypothesis, and has no place in experimental philosophy. It is the principal source of accurate facts. When Jenner first communicated to John Hunter, what he thoug

Religion of Sha

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t is a guide to experiment, which does. The hypotheses of Columbus respecting an unknown continent, did not of itself discover America-but it directed the experiment of his voyage there, which did. To hypothesise alone is the error of the visionary and the dreamer. Practical wisdom, as far as possible, tests hypothesis by experiment. Sir C. Bell conjectured that the nervous fluid of the human body was analogous to galvanic fluid, and then, by experiments on various animals, he endeavoured to test his hypothesis. However, great thinkers arise who are best empl

really attainable, and till it be attained, the hypothesis ought not to count for more than a suspicion. The function of hypothesis is one which must be reckoned absol

Vol. II

is elicitable. Induction is an experiment with a number of facts, to see if any general result can be arrived at. Thus observation is of three kinds-discursive, experimental, and inductive. For brevity of speech, we use respectively the terms observation, experim

argument. Facts, like stones, are of little service while scattered-it is in the edifice raised by them that their value is apparent. They have been compared to blocks, upon one of which, if a person stand, he has but a partially increased view; but when many are piled up, a person from their summit comman

hesis. But the one fact of finding a peculiarity proved nothing new of any value. The two facts, though incident, were hardly convincing. They proved only that a peculiar head was accompanied in one case by peculiar habits-but whether one was the cause of the other, or whether the phenomena were in any way connected, still remained unknown. When, however, Gall, Spurzheim, and others, had travelled through Eu

method has been practised ever since the beginning of the world by every human being. It is constantly practised by the most ignorant clown, by the most thoughtless schoolboy, by the very child at the breast. That method leads the clown to the conclusion, that if he sows barley he shall not reap wheat. By that method, the schoolboy learns that a cloudy day is the best for catching trout. The very infant we imagine is led by induction to expect milk from his mother or nurse, and none from his father. Not only is it not true that Bacon invented the inductive method, but it is not true that he was the first person who correctly analysed that method and explained its uses.

Hist Essays,

inated his disciples with it. Few will doubt that had Bacon's Novum Organon appeared in the place of Aristotle's logic, and Aristotle's work in the place of Bacon's, that the advancement of learning in the world would now be in a very different state. Could Bacon have arrested the attention of the ancient sages with his methods of discovering new principles, ancient philosophy, instead

urce of our knowledge, and that it is the province of logic to teach us to systematise our thoughts. Observation, experiment, hypothesis and induction, are but different names for the

ounces that 'nothing is necessary except the connection between a conclusion and the premises.' A necessary truth is commonly defined as a propos

d from forming these inseparable associations. But this advantage has necessarily its limits. The man of the most practised intellect is not exempt from the universal laws of our conceptive faculty. If daily habit presents to him for a long period two facts in combination, and if he is not led during that period either by accident or intention to think of them apart, he will in time become incapable of doing so even by the strongest effort; and the supposition that the two facts can be separated in nature, will at last present itself to his mind with all the characters of an inconceivable phenomenon. There are remarkable instances of this in the history of science: instances, in which the wisest men rejected as impossible, because inconceivable, things which their posterity, by earlier practice and longer perseverance in the attempt, found it quite easy to conceive, and which everybody knows to be true. 'If, then, it be so natural to the human mind, even in its highest state of culture, to be incapable of conceiving, and on that ground to believe impossible, what is afterwards not only found to be conceivable but proved to be true; what wonder if in cases where the association is still older, more confirmed, and more familiar, and in which nothing ever occurs to shake our conviction, or even suggest to us any conception at variance with the association, the acquired incapacity should continue, and be mistaken for a natural incapacity? It i

gic, vol. 1

brought between assertion and proof, is all we have yet conquered, is all that we as yet know, is all that we can yet rely upon. The search after the untried is the highest and apparently