For accidental observations,
made according to no preconceived plan, cannot be united under a
necessary law. But it is this that reason seeks for and requires. It
is only the principles of reason which can give to concordant
phenomena the validity of laws, and it is only when experiment is
directed by these rational principles that it can have any real
utility. Reason must approach nature with the view, indeed, of
receiving information from it, not, however, in the character of a
pupil, who listens to all that his master chooses to tell him, but
in that of a judge, who compels the witnesses to reply to those
questions which he himself thinks fit to propose. To this single
idea must the revolution be ascribed, by which, after groping in the
dark for so many centuries, natural science was at length conducted
into the path of certain progress.
*I do not here follow with exactness the history of the experimental
method, of which, indeed, the first steps are involved in some
obscurity.
We come now to metaphysics, a purely speculative science, which
occupies a completely isolated position and is entirely independent of
the teachings of experience.
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