Page:A philosophical essay on probabilities Tr. Truscott, Emory 1902.djvu/99

Rh this solution is impossible and it remains only to augment more and more this probability. In the midst of numerous and incalculable modifications which the action of the causes receives then from strange circumstances these causes conserve always with the effects observed the proper ratios to make them recognizable and to verify their existence. Determining these ratios and comparing them with a great number of observations if one finds that they constantly satisfy it, the probability of the causes may increase to the point of equalling that of facts in regard to which there is no doubt. The investigation of these ratios of causes to their effects is not less useful in natural philosophy than the direct solution of problems whether it be to verify the reality of these causes or to determine the laws from their effects; since it may be employed in a great number of questions whose direct solution is not possible, it replaces it in the most advantageous manner. I shall discuss here the application which I have made of it to one of the most interesting phenomena of nature, the flow and the ebb of the sea.

Pline has given of this phenomenon a description remarkable for its exactitude, and in it one sees that the ancients had observed that the tides of each month are greatest toward the syzygies and smallest toward the quadratures; that they are higher in the perigees than in the apogees of the moon, and higher in the equinoxes than in the solstices. They concluded from this that this phenomenon is due to the action of the sun and moon upon the sea. In the preface of hia work De Stella Martis Kepler admits a tendency of the waters of the sea toward the moon; but, ignorant of the