"The true modern philosophy never makes more characteristic exhibition of itself, than at the limit which separates the known from the unknown. It is there that we behold it in a twofold aspect--that of the utmost deference and respect for all the findings of experience within this limit; that, on the other hand, of the utmost disinclination and distrust for all those fancies of ingenious or plausible speculation which have their place in the ideal region beyond it. {110} To call in the aid of a language which far surpasses our own in expressive brevity, its office is '_indagare_' rather than '_divinare_.' The products of this philosophy are copies and not creations. It may discover a system of nature, but not devise one. It proceeds first on the observation of individual facts and if these facts are ever harmonised into a system, this is only in the exercise of a more extended observation. In the work of systematising, it makes no excursion beyond the territory of actual nature--for they are the actual phenomena of nature which form the first materials of this philosophy--and they are the actual resemblances of these phenomena that form, as it were, the cementing principle, to which the goodly fabrics of modern science owe all the solidity and all the endurance that belong to them. {111} It is this chiefly which distinguishes the philosophy of the present day from that of by-gone ages. The one was mainly an excogitative, the other mainly a descriptive process--a description however extending to the likenesses as well as to the peculiarities of things; and, by means of these likenesses, these observed likenesses alone, often realising a more glorious and magnificent harmony than was ever pictured forth by all the imaginations of all the theorists. "In the mental characteristics of this philosophy, the strength of a full-grown understanding is blended with the modesty of childhood. The ideal is sacrificed to the actual--and, however splendid or fondly cherished a hypothesis may be, yet if but one phenomenon in the real history of nature stand in the way, it is forthwith and conclusively abandoned. To some the renunciation may be as painful as the cutting off a right hand, or the plucking out a right eye--yet, if true to the great principle of the Baconian school, it must be submitted to. {112} With its hardy disciples one valid proof outweighs a thousand plausibilities--and the resolute firmness wherewith they bid away the speculations of fancy is only equalled by the childlike compliance wherewith they submit themselves to the lessons of experience.