Now, however such language may be objected to as savouring of Conceptualism, I can see no better compendious way of describing these processes than by saying that we are engaged in getting at conceptions of these external phenomena, and as far as possible converting these conceptions into facts. What is the natural history of 'facts' if we trace them back to their origin? They first come into being as mere guesses or conjectures, as contemplated possibilities whose correspondence with reality is either altogether disbelieved or regarded as entirely doubtful. In this stage, of course, their contrast with facts is sharp enough. _How_ they arise it does not belong to Logic but to Psychology to say. Logic indeed has little or nothing to do with them whilst they are in this form. Everyone is busy all his life in entertaining such guesses upon various subjects, the superiority of the philosopher over the common man being mainly found in the quality of his guesses, and in the skill and persistence with which he sifts and examines them. In the next stage they mostly go by the name of theories or hypotheses, when they are comprehensive in their scope, or are in any way on a scale of grandeur and importance: when however they are of a trivial kind, or refer to details, we really have no distinctive or appropriate name for them, and must be content therefore to call them 'conceptions.' Through this stage they flit with great rapidity in Inductive Logic; often the logician keeps them back until their evidence is so strong that they come before the world at once in the full dignity of facts. Hence, as already remarked, this stage of their career is not much dwelt upon in Logic. But the whole business of Probability is to discuss and estimate them at this point. Consequently, so far as this science is concerned, the explanation of the Material logician as to the reference of names and propositions has to be modified.