Page:Herschel - A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1831).djvu/113

 then, under this kind of mental convention, frame a definition or statement of one of them, in such words that it shall apply equally to them all, such statement will appear in the form of a general proposition, having so far at least the character of a law of nature.

(90.) For example: a great number of transparent substances, when exposed, in a certain particular manner, to a beam of light which has been prepared by undergoing certain reflexions or refractions, (and has thereby acquired peculiar properties, and is said to be "polarized,") exhibit very vivid and beautiful colours, disposed in streaks, bands, &c. of great regularity, which seem to arise within the substance, and which, from a certain regular succession observed in their appearance, are called "periodical colours." Among the substances which exhibit periodical colours occur a great variety of transparent solids, but no fluids and no opaque solids. Here, then, there seems to be sufficient community of nature to enable us to use a general term, and to state the proposition as a law, viz. transparent solids exhibit periodical colours by exposure to polarized light. However, this, though true of many, does not apply to all transparent solids, and therefore we cannot state it as a general truth or law of nature in this form; although the reverse proposition, that all solids which exhibit such colours in such circumstances are transparent, would be correct and general. It becomes necessary, then, to make a list of those to which it does apply; and thus a great number of substances of all kinds become grouped together, in a class