Page:The Harveian oration ; delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, June 26th, 1879 (IA b24976465).pdf/33

 the enquiry be physiological, chemical or physical the method is one. So far from their being able to say whether the inductive or deductive process is the better, they are employing both. The scientific enquirer looks at some phenomenon in nature and asks himself its meaning. The fact to which his attention is directed is one which millions have passed by unobserved, or have regarded if known, as too trivial or commonplace to be worthy of notice; it is this exceptional acumen which probably constitutes his special power or genius. He takes the fact, forms a conjecture as to its meaning, and frames an hypothesis or, if you will, a guess. He then endeavours to find if this have a basis of truth, and he performs experiments calculated to test its value. He perhaps fails, and then forms another conjecture which he once more puts to the test. He may at last be confirmed in the view he has taken, he then widens his experiments and at the same time his conceptions grow larger, until step by step, theorising and experimenting, able to form one grand theory of the whole, which he again proves to be correct by the accuracy of the deductions which flow from it.

I think it is evident that the old methods which