diculed in the Theaetetus, they were incapable of giving a
reason of the faith that was in them, and had all the animosities of a
religious sect. Yet, doubtless, there was some first impression derived
from external nature, which, as in mythology, so also in philosophy,
worked upon the minds of the first thinkers. Though incapable of
induction or generalization in the modern sense, they caught an
inspiration from the external world. The most general facts or
appearances of nature, the circle of the universe, the nutritive power
of water, the air which is the breath of life, the destructive force
of fire, the seeming regularity of the greater part of nature and the
irregularity of a remnant, the recurrence of day and night and of the
seasons, the solid earth and the impalpable aether, were always present
to them.

The great source of error and also the beginning of truth to them
was reasoning from analogy; they could see resemblances, but not
differences; and they were incapable of distinguishing illustration
from argument. Analogy in modern times only points the way, and is
immediately verified by experiment. The dreams and visions, which
pass through the philosopher's mind, of resemblances between different
classes of substances, or between the animal and vegetable world, are
put into the refiner's fire, and the dross and other elements which
adhere to them are purged away. But the contemporary of Plato and
Socrates was incapable of resisting the power of any analogy which
occurred to him, and was drawn into any consequences which seemed to
follow. He had no methods of difference or of concomitant variations, by
the use of which he could distinguish the accidental from the essential.
He could not isolate phenomena, and he was helpless against the
influence of any word which had an equivocal or double sense.

Yet without this crude use of analogy the ancient physical philosopher
would have stood still; he could not have made even 'one guess among
many' without comparison. The course of natural phenomena would have
passed unheeded before his eyes, like fair sights or musical sounds
before the eyes and ears of an animal. Even the fetichism of the savage
is the beginning of reasoning; the assumption of the most fanciful of
causes indicates a higher mental state than the absence of all enquiry
about them. The tendency to argue from the higher to the lower, from
man to the world, has led to many errors, but has also had an