60

O.58

and the grovelling notions that primitive man must have had of his environment has been step by step bridged over by man's conjectures; and that neither of the other Stages of inquiry have supplied a single new idea. It is so plain that, under these circumstance, the success of scientific inquiries alone and that of individual inquiries alone, establishes far beyond all reasonable doubt that the human mind has a decided tendency to guess right independently of any evidence, that I feel shame in arguing such a point. Yet I will give one out of several arguments of equal force to the same effect. It is evident, as DeMorgan first showed, that the members of any collection or arbitrary list whatever have some character at once common