which differ, the hypothesis had afforded a
reason for agreement between things which agree; if the intermediate
link by which the quaternary compound was resolved into two binary ones,
could have been so chosen as to bring each of them within the analogies
of some known class of binary compounds (which it is easy to suppose
possible, and which in some particular instances actually happens);[11]
the universality of binary composition would have been a successful
example of an hypothesis in anticipation of a positive theory, to give
a direction to inquiry which might end in its being either proved or
abandoned. But M. Comte evidently thought that even though it should
never be proved--however many cases of chemical composition might always
remain in which the theory was still as hypothetical as at first--so
long as it was not actually disproved (which it is scarcely in the
nature of the case that it should ever be) it would deserve to be
retained, for its mere convenience in bringing a large body of
phaenomena under a general conception. In a _resume_ of the general
principles of the positive method at the end of the work, he claims,
in express terms, an unlimited license of adopting "without any vain
scruple" hypothetical conceptions of this sort; "in order to satisfy,
within proper limits, our just mental inclinations, which always turn,
with an instinctive predilection, towards simplicity, continuity, and
generality of conceptions, while always respecting the reality of
external laws in so far as accessible to us" (vi. 639). "The most
philosophic point of view leads us to conceive the study of natural laws
as destined to represent the external world so as to give as much
satisfaction to the essential inclinations of our intelligence, as is
consistent with the degree of exactitude commanded by the aggregate of
our practical wants" (vi. 642). Among these "essential inclinations" he
includes not only our "instinctive predilection for order and harmony,"
which makes us relish any conception, even fictitious, that helps to
reduce phaenomena to system; but even our feelings of taste, "les
convenances purement esthetiques," which, he says, have a legitimate
part in the employment of the "genre de liberte" reste facultatif pour
notre intelligence." After the due satisfaction of our "most eminent
mental inclinations," there will still remain "a considerable margin of
indeterminateness, which should be made use of to give a dire