(94.) It is thus we perceive the high importance in physical science of just and accurate classifications of particular facts, or individual objects, under general well considered heads or points of agreement (for which there are none better adapted than the simple phenomena themselves into which they can be analysed in the first instance); for by so doing each of such phenomena, or heads of classification, becomes not a particular but a general fact; and when we have amassed a great store of such _general facts_, they become the objects of another and higher species of classification, and are themselves included in laws which, as they dispose of groups, not individuals, have a far superior degree of generality, till at length, by continuing the process, we arrive at _axioms_ of the highest degree of generality of which science is capable. (95.) This process is what we mean by induction; and, from what has been said, it appears that induction may be carried on in two different ways,--either by the simple juxta-position and comparison of ascertained classes, and marking their agreements and disagreements; or by considering the individuals of a class, and casting about, as it were to find in what particular they all agree, besides that which serves as their principle of classification. Either of these methods may be put in practice as one or the other may afford facilities in any case; but it will naturally happen that, where facts are numerous, well observed, and methodically arranged, the former will be more applicable than in the contrary case: the one is better adapted to the maturity, the other to the infancy, of science: the one employs, as an engine, the division of labour; the other mainly relies on individual penetration, and requires a union of many branches of knowledge in one person. CHAP. III. OF THE STATE OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN GENERAL, PREVIOUS TO THE AGE OF GALILEO AND BACON.