hesis? Why _if_ an hypothesis--if the merest
hypothesis--if an hypothesis for whose assumption--as in the case of that
_pure_ hypothesis the Newtonian law itself--no shadow of _a priori_
reason could be assigned--if an hypothesis, even so absolute as all this
implies, would enable us to perceive a principle for the Newtonian
law--would enable us to understand as satisfied, conditions so
miraculously--so ineffably complex and seemingly irreconcileable as those
involved in the relations of which Gravity tells us,--what rational being
_could_ so expose his fatuity as to call even this absolute hypothesis
an hypothesis any longer--unless, indeed, he were to persist in so
calling it, with the understanding that he did so, simply for the sake
of consistency _in words_?

But what is the true state of our present case? What is _the fact_? Not
only that it is _not_ an hypothesis which we are required _to adopt_,
in order to admit the principle at issue explained, but that it _is_ a
logical conclusion which we are requested _not_ to adopt if we can avoid
it--which we are simply invited to _deny if we can_:--a conclusion of so
accurate a logicality that to dispute it would be the effort--to doubt
its validity beyond our power:--a conclusion from which we see no mode of
escape, turn as we will; a result which confronts us either at the end
of an _in_ductive journey from the phaenomena of the very Law discussed,
or at the close of a _de_ductive career from the most rigorously simple
of all conceivable assumptions--_the assumption, in a word, of Simplicity
itself_.

And if here, for the mere sake of cavilling, it be urged, that although
my starting-point is, as I assert, the assumption of absolute
Simplicity, yet Simplicity, considered merely in itself, is no axiom;
and that only deductions from axioms are indisputable--it is thus that I
reply:--

Every other science than Logic is the science of certain concrete
relations. Arithmetic, for example, is the science of the relations of
number--Geometry, of the relations of form--Mathematics in general, of the
relations of quantity in general--of whatever can be increased or
diminished. Logic, however, is the science of Relation in the
abstract--of absolute Relation--of Relation considered solely in itself.
An axiom in any particular science other than Logic is, thus, merely a
proposition announcing certain concrete relations which seem to be too
obvious for dispute--as when we say, fo