PREFACE.

There is no term, perhaps, that has been more frequently and more grossly abused and misapplied than that of Science. The word, in its proper and legitimate sense, unquestionably denotes something known, or, at least, something worthy of being known; and it is generally, and most correctly, employed to denote a series of combined facts which tend to establish a certain general law, or series of laws, of Nature, either in the physical, the intellectual, or the moral world.

In order to serve as a foundation for any general conclusion in matters of science, however, it is necessary to demonstrate, in the first place, that those facts upon which we rely do really and permanently exist in nature, under certain conditions of development; that they are not exceptional, fictitious, or illusory; that they, under the requisite conditions, are not merely isolated phenomena of an accidental or capricious, equivocal and transitory