Page:A philosophical essay on probabilities Tr. Truscott, Emory 1902.djvu/188

178 We judge by induction that if various events, movements, for example, appear constantly and have been long connected by a simple ratio, they will continue to be subjected to it; and we conclude from this, by the theory of probabilities, that this ratio is due, not to hazard, but to a regular cause. Thus the equality of the movements of the rotation and the revolution of the moon; that of the movements of the nodes of the orbit and of the lunar equator, and the coincidence of these nodes; the singular ratio of the movements of the first three satellites of Jupiter, according to which the mean longitude of the first satellite, less three times that of the second, plus two times that of the third, is equal to two right angles; the equality of the interval of the tides to that of the passage of the moon to the meridian; the return of the greatest tides with the syzygies, and of the smallest with the quadratures; all these things, which have been maintained since they were first observed, indicate with an extreme probability, the existence of constant causes which geometricians have happily succeeded in attaching to the law of universal gravity, and the knowledge of which renders certain the perpetuity of these ratios.

The chancellor Bacon, the eloquent promoter of the true philosophical method, has made a very strange misuse of induction in order to prove the immobility of the earth. He reasons thus in the Novum Organum, his finest work: "The movement of the stars from the orient to the Occident increases in swiftness, in proportion to their distance from the earth. This movement is swiftest with the stars; it slackens a little with Saturn, a little more with Jupiter, and so on to