lished Law which constitutes the true and legitimate
Deductive Method of Science, the third of the three Methods above stated
and the one which, as has been pointed out, is often erroneously
confounded with the Anticipative or Hypothetical Method.

The mode of investigation by the Inductive Method is, therefore, in
general, similar to that which Aristotle and the Greek Scientists
adopted. It first Observes and Collects Facts; then it resorts to
Classification for the purpose of discovering the Law by which the
observed Facts are regulated; then _derives_ from this Classification a
General Law, presumed to be applicable to all similar Facts, although
they have not yet been observed; and, finally, _deduces_ from the
General Law thus established, new Facts and Particulars, by bringing
them in under the Law.

The Inductive Method is, therefore, almost identical in its mode of
procedure with one of the processes anciently adopted for the
acquisition of knowledge under the Anticipative or Hypothetical Method.
It failed of fruitful results, in this earlier age, because, as we have
seen, men were not content with adhering rigorously and patiently to the
logical, irresistible conclusions which Facts evolved, but sought to
wrench from them Principles, which required for their establishment a
wider or different range of phenomena. On the revival of this Method
among the modern Scientists, it was conceived, especially by Bacon, that
a rigid adhesion to the legitimate deductions of Facts and a faithful
exclusion from the domain of knowledge of everything which did _not_
logically and inevitably result from the Observation and Classification
of Facts, was the only safe way to arrive at certainty in any department
of thought. It is this fidelity to conclusions rigorously derived from
Facts, and the severe exclusion of everything not clearly substantiated
by Observation, Classification, and Induction, which has given us the
body of proximately definite knowledge that we now possess, and which,
so far as it has been persevered in, has been productive of such
beneficial intellectual results.

Under the guidance of this Inductive Method new Sciences have been
gradually generated, whose foundations and Principles are capable of
such a degree of satisfactory proof as the Method itself affords. During
the present century, Auguste Comte, a distinguished French philosopher,
often denominated the Bacon of our epoch, the special champion of th