To direct
observation succeeds, although long afterward, the wish to prosecute
experiments; that is to say, to evoke phenomena under different determined
conditions. The rational experimentalist does not proceed at hazard, but
acts under the guidance of hypotheses, founded on a half indistinct and more
or less just intuition of the connection existing among natural objects or
forces. That which has been conquered by observation or by means of
experiments, leads, by analysis and induction, to the discovery of empirical
laws. These are the phases in human intellect that have marked the
different epochs in the life of nations, and by means of which that great
mass of facts has been accumulated which constitutes at the present day the
solid basis of the natural sciences.
Two forms of abstraction conjointly regulate our knowledge, namely,
relations of 'quantity', comprising ideas of number and size, and relations
of 'quality', embracing the consideration of the specific properties and the
heterogeneous nature
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of matter. The former, as being more accessible to the exercise of thought,
appertains to mathematics; the latter, from the apparent mysteries and
greater difficulties, falls under the domain of the chemical sciences.
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