correct path to Scientific truth, that it is the best path to Scientific truth which will ever be known, or that in a rightly balanced Method it would be the main Process, is an averment for which there is no warrant. On the contrary, a very cursory examination of the Inductive Method will show defects which render it unavailable as the sole or the chief guide in Scientific inquiry.

The leading characteristic of the Inductive Method, that for which it is mainly admired, is its cautious, laborious, oftentimes tedious Observation and Collection of the Facts of Experience, and their careful Classification as a basis for the derivation of a Principle or Law applicable to the Phenomena grouped together. By this means, it is said, we secure precision and certainty, by which is intended, not only the certainty of that which is already observed and classified, but also the certainty of that which is deduced from the Law or Principle derived from these known Facts. It is just here, however, that the Inductive Method is lacking. Experience may testify a thousand, ten thousand, any indefinite number of times, to the repetition of the same Phenomena, and yet we can have no certainty of the recurrence of the same Phenomena, in the future, in the same way. All the Facts of Observation and Experience for thousands of years went to convince men that the earth was at rest and the sun and stars passing around it. A larger Experience showed them their error. How shall we know that our Observation has at any time included all the Facts necessary to establish a Law? The history of Science, even under the guidance of the Inductive Method, is a history of Principles announced as firmly established, which a little later were found to be defective and had to be adjusted to the advanced stage of human Experience. The very nature of the Inductive Method indicates its inadequacy for the largest and most important purposes of Science. It gives certainty, where it does give it, only up to the point of the present, it can never afford complete certainty for the future. The logical and rigid testimony of this Method can never be more than this;—Observation and Experience show that such has been the uniform operation of Nature in this particular so far as can be discovered, and in all probability it will always continue to be such. High Probability, amounting, it may be, at times, to an assurance of certainty, is the strongest proof which this Method can, from its very nature, produce. To establish a Principle or Law for a certainty beyond any possibility of doubt by the Inductive Method, it is essential that we should know that we are in possession of every Fact in the universe which has any relation to the given Principle, or rather that we should know that there are no Facts in the universe at variance with it. To know this, it is necessary to be in possession of all the Facts in the universe, since the Inductive Method has no mode of discovering when it has sifted out of the immense mass of Facts all those which exist in connection with any given Law. As we shall never be in possession of all the Facts of the universe, we shall never be able, by the Inductive Method, to possess certainty in respect to the future operations of Nature; and thus we discover the insufficiency of this Method as a perfect guide to the acquisition of knowledge.

The famed Inductive Method, like the Anticipative or Hypothetical, furnishes, in truth, only an assumption as a starting point for reasoning in the endeavor to establish other Facts than those already known. The verification of the Law or Principle assumed is, indeed, in the former Method, as complete as it can be, in the nature of the case, while in the latter it is not; but we have just seen that the strongest proof which Observation, Classification, and Induction can give is that of High Probability, on the supposition that a certain number of Facts from which a Law is derived include substantially all that the whole range of Phenomena belonging to the given sphere would represent. Any possible application of the Inductive Method is, therefore, only a nearer or more remote approximation to an Exactitude and Certainty which the Method itself can never fully attain.

The Inductive Method being thus defective as a Scientific guide, in the most important requirement of Science, it is unnecessary to enter into an exposition of minor defects, not the least of which is the slowness with which conclusions must necessarily be arrived at, when they are reached only by the gradual accumulation of Facts and the derivation of a Law from these. A Method or a Process which lacks that which is the very essence of Science—the power of making known, of introducing certainty into investigation, may be an important factor in the true Scientific Method, but cannot constitute the Method itself, or its leading feature. Let it not be understood, however, that in bringing the Inductive Method in Science to the ordeal of a critical examination, it is designed to detract from its just dues or to depreciate its true value. Science is preëminently severe in its probings; and that which, asserts its claim to the highest Scientific position, and affects to be the only guide to exact knowledge, cannot expect anything less than the most rigorous inquiry into the validity of such claim, and the most peremptory insistence upon the production of proper credentials before so lofty a seat be accorded it. If inquiry discovers deficiencies in its character, Science should rejoice that truth is vindicated, and that, by correctly understanding the nature and powers of their present guide, Scientific men may avoid being tempted to consider it as competent to conduct them into regions where the blind must inevitably be leading the blind, and both be in danger of the ditch. If the devotees of the Inductive Method have in their enthusiasm set up claims for it which cannot be substantiated, they must not blame the rigorous hand, which, in the service of Science, unmasks their idol and exhibits its defects, but rather impute to their own deviation from the severity of Scientific truth, the disappointment which they may experience. The question of Method lies at the foundation of all Science. Until it is thoroughly understood, until the exact character of all our Methods or Processes is definitely and rightly apprehended, there can be no full understanding of the true nature of Science, and, hence, no critical and exact line drawn between that which is Science and that which is not.

Our examination of the Methods in use thus far in our past search after knowledge has developed these facts:—that prior to an era which is commonly said to commence with Bacon, the Method of intellectual investigation was mainly by attempting to proceed from Principles to Facts, and that the attempt exhibits three distinct phases: one, in which the Induction stage is so simple and so short as to be instinctively and correctly performed by all people, and the Deductive stage at once reached—this furnishes the Mathematics, the only Science in which hitherto the true Deductive Method has prevailed; a second, in which Principles are assumed to reason from, without any previous effort at Induction, such as existed, being unconsciously made from the supposed Facts or Knowledge which the mind was in possession of; and a third, in which Facts were collected, classified, and Induction therefrom as a basis of further investigation attempted, but in which the Laws or Principles assumed as established by the Facts were not rigorously and accurately derived from Facts; or, in other words, in which the Facts were not strictly used for the purpose of deriving from them just such Laws or Principles only as they actually established, but were wrenched to the attempted support