is no _special object_, he says. Any one would
suppose that M. Biot's opinion, given to the French Government upon the
proposal to construct meteorological observatories in Algeria (_Comptes
Rendus_, vol. xli, Dec. 31, 1855), was written to support the mythical
Bacon, modern physics, against the real Bacon of the _Novum Organum_. There
is no _special object_. In these words lies the difference between the two
methods.

[In the report to the Greenwich Board of Visitors for 1867 Mr. Airy,[129]
speaking of the increase of meteorological observatories, remarks, "Whether
the effect of this movement will be that millions of useless observations
will be added to the millions that already exist, or whether something may
be expected to result which will lead to a meteorological theory, I cannot
hazard a conjecture." This _is_ a conjecture, and a very obvious one: if
Mr. Airy would have given 2-3/4d. for the chance of a meteorological theory
formed by masses of observations, he would never have said what I have
quoted.]

BASIS OF MODERN DISCOVERY.

Modern discoveries have not been made by large collections of facts, with
subsequent discussion, separation, and {86} resulting deduction of a truth
thus rendered perceptible. A few facts have suggested an _hypothesis_,
which means a _supposition_, proper to explain them. The necessary results
of this supposition are worked out, and then, and not till then, other
facts are examined to see if these ulterior results are found in nature.
The trial of the hypothesis is the _special object_: prior to which,
hypothesis must have been started, not by rule, but by that sagacity of
which no description can be given, precisely because the very owners of it
do not act under laws perceptible to themselves.[130] The inventor of
hypothesis, if pressed to explain his method, must answer as did Zerah
Colburn,[131] when asked for his mode of instantaneous calculation. When
the poor boy had been bothered for some time in this manner, he cried out
in a huff, "God put it into my head, and I can't put it into yours."[132]
{87} Wrong hypotheses, rightly worked from, have produced more useful
results than unguided observation. But this is not the Baconian plan.
Charles the Second, when informed of the state of navigation, founded a
Baconian observatory at Greenwich, to observe, observe, observe away at the
moon, until her motions were known sufficiently well to render her useful
in guiding the sea