This accordingly it is the purpose of the present work to attempt. But I may further observe, that as my hope of making any progress in this undertaking is {13} founded upon the design of keeping constantly in view the whole result of the past history and present condition of science, I have also been led to draw my lessons from my examples in a manner more systematic and regular, as appears to me, than has been done by preceding writers. Bacon, as I have just said, was led to his maxims for the promotion of knowledge by the sagacity of his own mind, with little or no aid from previous examples. Succeeding philosophers may often have gathered useful instruction from the instances of scientific truths and discoveries which they adduced, but their conclusions were drawn from their instances casually and arbitrarily. They took for their moral any which the story might suggest. But such a proceeding as this cannot suffice for us, whose aim is to obtain a consistent body of philosophy from a contemplation of the whole of Science and its History. For our purpose it is necessary to resolve scientific truths into their conditions and ingredients, in order that we may see in what manner each of these has been and is to be provided, in the cases which we may have to consider. This accordingly is necessarily the first part of our task:--_to analyse Scientific Truth into its Elements_. This attempt will occupy the earlier portion of the present work; and will necessarily be somewhat long, and perhaps, in many parts, abstruse and uninviting. The risk of such an inconvenience is inevitable; for the inquiry brings before us many of the most dark and entangled questions in which men have at any time busied themselves. And even if these can now be made clearer and plainer than of yore, still they can be made so only by means of mental discipline and mental effort. Moreover this analysis of scientific truth into its elements contains much, both in its principles and in its results, different from the doctrines most generally prevalent among us in recent times: but on that very account this analysis is an essential part of the doctrines which I have now to lay before the reader: and I must therefore crave his indulgence towards any portion of it which may appear to him obscure or repulsive. {14}