tedious to prove, and the gifts that tell in proof,
such as Newton's immense mathematical power in calculating what
a hypothesis implies, Darwin's patience in verifying, Faraday's
ingenuity in devising experiments, are all great gifts, and may be
serviceable at different stages. But without originality and fertility
in probable hypothesis, nothing can be done.

The dispute between Mill and Whewell as to the place and value of
hypotheses in science was in the main a dispute about words. Mill
did not really undervalue hypothesis, and he gave a most luminous and
accurate account of the conditions of proof. But here and there he
incautiously spoke of the "hypothetical method" (by which he meant
what we have called the method of Explanation) as if it were a
defective kind of proof, a method resorted to by science when the
"experimental methods" could not be applied. Whether his language
fairly bore this construction is not worth arguing, but this was
manifestly the construction that Whewell had in his mind when he
retorted, as if in defence of hypotheses, that "the inductive process
consists in framing successive hypotheses, the comparison of these
with the ascertained facts of nature, and the introduction into them
of such modifications as the comparison may render necessary". This is
a very fair description of the whole method of explanation. There
is nothing really inconsistent with it in Mill's account of his
"hypothetical method"; only he erred himself or was the cause of error
in others in suggesting, intentionally or unintentionally, that
the Experimental Methods were different methods of proof. The
"hypothetical method," as he described it, consisting of Induction,
Ratiocination, and Verification, really comprehends the principles
of all modes of observation, whether naturally or artificially
experimental. We see this at once when we ask how the previous
knowledge is got in accordance with which hypotheses are framed. The
answer must be, by Observation. However profound the calculations,
it must be from observed laws, or supposed analogues of them, that
we start. And it is always by Observation that the results of these
calculations are verified.

Both Mill and Whewell, however, confined themselves too exclusively
to the great hypotheses of the Sciences, such as Gravitation and the
Undulatory Theory of Light. In the consideration of scientific method,
it is a mistake to confine our attention to these great question