t find it, because he makes a mistake, and he
rejects his idea as useless. The idea returns; a new course of labor
confirms it; and so the hypothesis becomes a law, a certain proposition.

Such is the regular march of thought. An hypothesis has no right to be
brought forward until it has passed into the condition of a law, by
being duly confirmed. There are minds, however, endowed with a sort of
divination, which feel as by instinct the truth of a discovery, even
before it has been confirmed. It is told of Copernicus, that having
discovered, or re-discovered, the true system of planetary motion, he
encountered an opponent who said to him: "If your system were true,
Venus would have phases like the moon; now she has none, and therefore
your system is false. What have you to reply?"--"I have no reply to
make," said Copernicus, (the objection was a serious one in fact); "but
God will grant that the answer shall be found."[165] Galileo appeared,
and by means of the telescope it was ascertained that Venus has phases
like the moon;--the confidence of Copernicus was justified. The
scientific career of M. Ampere, the illustrious natural philosopher,
supplies an analogous fact. Trusting, like Copernicus, to a kind of
intuition of truth, he read one day to the Academy of sciences the
complete description of an experiment which he had never made. He made
it subsequently, and the result answered completely to his
anticipations. Genius is here raised to the second power, since it
possesses at once the gift of discovery and the just presentiment of its
confirmation; but these are exceptional cases, and in general we must
say, with Mithridates, that--

.... To be approved as true
Such projects must be proved, and carried through.[166]

We would encourage no one to attempt adventures so perilous, but would
call to mind in a great example what is the regular march of science.
Newton, after he had discovered the law which regulates the motions of
the heavens, sought the confirmation of it in an immense series of
calculations. A true ascetic of science, he imposed on himself a regimen
as severe as that of a Trappist monk, in order that his life might be
wholly concentrated upon the operations of the understanding; and it was
not until after fifteen months of persistent labor that he exclaimed: "I
have discovered it! My calculations have really encountered the march of
the stars. Glory to God! who has pe