Page:Hunterian oration, delivered in the theatre of the Royal College of Surgeons in London on February 14th 1829 (electronic resource) (IA b2148305x).pdf/16

12 exercise and appropriation of the powers of the mind for the evolution and declaration of immutable truths. As truths can be only discovered by tracing relations and determining conditions, so the faculties of the intellect, their power of combining and comparing, are the only means by which the problems of science can be conducted. The arrangement of these powers, and the proper combination of them, in the adaptation of them to an enquiry, become the canons of science.

It is in the advance that is made in establishing first truths, and, therefore, in the degree in which these faculties of the mind are exercised in any department of knowledge, that the mode of enquiry is, or is not, to assume the title of science. And no exercise of the mind that falls short of this scope, or that rests satisfied with positions that are not absolutely true, can justly receive this name. It is to the glory of