This last remark concerns the process of verification which the accomplished writer discusses through several subsequent pages.
Notwithstanding a passing observation of Dr. Tyndall's that "this power of pondering facts is one with which the ancients could be but imperfectly acquainted," some readers will be struck by the thought that it forms the nearest approach which can be made by any inductive discoverer to the old philosophical method of Dialectic. Janet says, in a volume to which those who have not encountered it will thank me for introducing them, "La dialectique logique dans Platon est parfaitement conforme aux lois de la raison. Elle ne sert qu'à réfuter les idées fausses, ou à éclaircir les idées données antérieurement par une sorte de synthèse, qui, suivant les uns, n'est que le progrès de la généralisation, et, selon nous, est le progrès de l'intuition." (Études sur la Dialectique dans Platon et dans Hegel, p. 393.) For a more complete appreciation of what is here stated in few words, the student should peruse pp. 244, seq. The account given by Janet appears in some measure to coincide with Dr. Tyndall's idea, though perhaps the word "Intuition" might be more entirely approved by Schelling or Coleridge than by any Physicist.
Be this as it may, Dr. Tyndall's outline of the Inductive process in its highest form is evidently one which describes the prerogative of Genius—the exercise of Imagination as distinguished from Fancy—the child, that is, of Reason, rather than a stray bantling of sportive wit.
To bring his general conception within the grasp of every-day workers, and describe a procedure which may be adopted as a kind of practical rule or maxim, let us look at this subject in the following manner.
Suppose we take the example of a great idea; that, for instance, of the constitution of Great Britain, or any other nation which subsists in tolerable freedom from revolutionary change. There are clearly two elements involved—one, Permanence; the other, Progress. These, in the actual working constitution, form its factors, or moments (as they may be better termed); and in the idea or mental representation of the same, we may liken them to complementary colours in the spectrum, which appear separately contrasted in tint, but blend together in a wave of white light. Now, our analysing faculty of mind is, in point of fact, our intellectual prism. It separates each bright and strong idea into elements so antagonistic as to be apparently incompatible. Like clear yellow and shadowy violet, one component seems excellent in beauty, another its foil or opposite. To one class of minds truth consists in Permanence, and Progress is a note of evil omen. Of another class the contradictory is true. The real statesman alone knows that their blending is a question of measure and degree, of human affairs,—time, circumstance, and opportunity.
We may ask with reason what gain accrues to the statesman by looking at his country's constitution from this point of sight? Evidently a good deal. He will soon discern that practically it cannot exist in vigour if either factor be eliminated. Each is given in the analysis of his prolific idea, and, however great may seem the apparent incompatibility, both must be capable of co-existence and correlation. Now, there could be no synthesis if, on the one hand, Progress did not imply a something which remains identical and in unity with itself, while it flourishes and grows;—or, on the other hand, if Permanence were not safest, when its strength is manifested by its vital increase. Consequently, to grow is to continue essentially the same;—to be permanent is to live and bear fresh fruit every passing year.
A precisely similar advantage accrues to the Ethical Philosopher from a process of the like description. He considers (it may be) the concrete idea of moral activity. Obviously, there must be found in it an unfettered power of choice, and a conformity to the rule of moral law. Submitted to the analytic prism, the two elements come out at opposite poles in very decided contrast. At the pole of necessary conformity we find what looks like Determinism;—at the pole of choice appears its irreconcilable antagonist, a sense of Responsibility, logically unexplained, but inalienable from our moral nature. And our Ethical inquirer finds the only possible synthesis of his two contrasted moments of morality in the deep truth that each righteous man is a Law unto himself. And hence it is, that the righteous shines out over the lower world of mechanical arrangement—a faint, it may be, but still a visible image of the God who made him what he is.[11]
By the same process of analysis and reconstruction the Natural Theologian arrives (as may be shown) at a synthesis of Faith and Reason. Yet these two are antagonistic in the eyes both of the sceptic and the superstitious. Les extrêmes se touchent, and by both extremes faith is relegated to the region of sentimental æsthetics.