er be restricted by the short limits of a single life--the
philosophy of nature laid aside the vague and poetic forms with which
she had at first been clothed, and has adopted a more severe character.

The history of science teaches us how inexact and incomplete
observations have led, through false inductions, to that great number
of erroneous physical views which have been perpetuated as popular
prejudices among all classes of society. Thus, side by side with a solid
and scientific knowledge of phenomena, there has been preserved a system
of pretended results of observation, the more difficult to shake because
it takes no account of any of the facts by which it is overturned.

This empiricism--melancholy inheritance of earlier times--invariably
maintains whatever axioms it has laid down; it is arrogant, as is
everything that is narrow-minded; while true physical philosophy,
founded on science, doubts because it seeks to investigate
thoroughly--distinguishes between that which is certain and that which
is simply probable--and labours incessantly to bring its theories nearer
to perfection by extending the circle of observation. This assemblage of
incomplete dogmas bequeathed from one century to another, this system of
physics made up of popular prejudices, is not only injurious because it
perpetuates error with all the obstinacy of ill-observed facts, but also
because it hinders the understanding from rising to the level of great
views of nature.

Instead of seeking to discover the _mean_ state around which, in the
midst of apparent independence and irregularity, the phenomena really
and invariably oscillate, this false science delights in multiplying
apparent exceptions to the dominion of fixed laws, and seeks, in organic
forms and the phenomena of nature, other marvels than those presented by
internal progressive development, and by regular order and succession.
Ever disinclined to recognise in the present the analogy of the past, it
is always disposed to believe the order of nature suspended by
perturbations, of which it places the seat, as if by chance, sometimes
in the interior of the earth, sometimes in the remote regions of space.

_II.--The Inductive Method_

The generalisation of laws which were first applied to smaller groups of
phenomena advances by successive gradations, and their empire is
extended, and their evidence strengthened, so long as the reasoning
process is directed to really analogous phenom