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of those laws, it is to be expected that he should have a natural light, or light of nature, or instinctive insight, or genius, tending to make him guess those laws aright, or nearly aright. This conclusion is confirmed when we find that every species of animal is endowed with a similar genius. For they not only, one and all, have some correct notions of force, that is to say, some correct notions, though excessively narrow, of phenomena which we, with our broader conceptions, should call phenomena of force, and some similarly correct notions about the minds of their own kind and of other kinds, which are the two sufficient cotyledons of all our science, but they
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they all have, furthermore, wonderful endowments of genius in other directions. Look at the little birds of which all species are so nearly identical in their physique, and yet what various forms of genius do they not display in modelling their nests? This would be impossible unless the ideas that are naturally predominant in their minds were true. It would be too contrary to analogy to suppose that similar gifts were wanting to man. Nor does the proof stop here. The history of science, especially the early history of modern science, on which I had the honor of giving some lectures in this hall some years ago, completes the
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proof by showing how few were the guesses that men of surpassing genius had to make before they rightly guessed the laws of nature.
When we pass from considering the most general laws to more special ones,— say for example the laws of electricity,— the direct light of nature becomes dimmed; but then it is here replaced, in great measure, by analogies as to general characteristics of other laws already known.
Finally, we have to consider quite special hypotheses, such as the hypotheses which we make about ancient history. My time
