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with our own conceits and labour to make it tally with our favourite schemes. Thus by blending together parts so ill-suited the whole comes forth an absurd composition of truth and error. These have not done near so much harm as that pride and ambition which has led philosophers to think it beneath them to offer anything less to the world than a complete and finished system of Nature; and in order to obtain this at once, to take the liberty of inventing certain principles and hypothesis from which they pretend to explain all her mysteries. Theories are things of uncertain mode. They depend in a great measure, upon the humour and caprice of the age, which is times in love with one and times with another.
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The system of Copernicus was admitted by its author to be merely an assumption, temporary and incapable of demonstration. The following are his words :
'It is not necessary that hypotheses should be true, or even probable. It is sufficient that they lead to results of calculation which agree with calculation. Neither let anyone, so far as hypothesis is concerned expect anything certain from astronomy, since that science can afford nothing of the kind, lest, in case he should adopt for truth, things feigned for
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another purpose, he should leave this Science more foolish than he come. The hypothesis of the terrestrial motion was nothing but an hypothesis, valuable only so far as it explained phenomena, and not considered with reference to absolute truth or falsehood.
The Newtonian and all other "views" and "C Systems" have the same general character as the "hypothesis of the terrestrial motion" framed by Copernicus. The foundations or premises are always unproved, no proof is ever attempted, the necessity for it is denied, it is considered sufficient that the assumptions seem to explain the phenomena selected, In this way it is that theory suppla nts theory, and system gives way to system, often in rapid succession, as one failure after another compels opinions to change. Until the practice of theorising is universally relinquished philosophy will continue to be looked upon by the bulk of mankind as a vain and mumbling pretension, antogonistic to the highest aspirations of humanity. Let there be adopted a trueand practical free-thought method, with sequence as the only test of truth and consistency, and the philosopher may become the Priest of science and the real benefactor of his species, "Honesty of thought is to look truth in the face, not in the
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