which seemed to follow. He had no methods of difference or of concomitant
variations, by the use of which he could distinguish the accidental from
the essential. He could not isolate phenomena, and he was helpless against
the influence of any word which had an equivocal or double sense.

Yet without this crude use of analogy the ancient physical philosopher
would have stood still; he could not have made even 'one guess among many'
without comparison. The course of natural phenomena would have passed
unheeded before his eyes, like fair sights or musical sounds before the
eyes and ears of an animal. Even the fetichism of the savage is the
beginning of reasoning; the assumption of the most fanciful of causes
indicates a higher mental state than the absence of all enquiry about them.
The tendency to argue from the higher to the lower, from man to the world,
has led to many errors, but has also had an elevating influence on
philosophy. The conception of the world as a whole, a person, an animal,
has been the source of hasty generalizations; yet this general grasp of
nature led also to a spirit of comprehensiveness in early philosophy, which
has not increased, but rather diminished, as the fields of knowledge have
become more divided. The modern physicist confines himself to one or
perhaps two branches of science. But he comparatively seldom rises above
his own department, and often falls under the narrowing influence which any
single branch, when pursued to the exclusion of every other, has over the
mind. Language, two, exercised a spell over the beginnings of physical
philosophy, leading to error and sometimes to truth; for many thoughts were
suggested by the double meanings of words (Greek), and the accidental
distinctions of words sometimes led the ancient philosopher to make
corresponding differences in things (Greek). 'If they are the same, why
have they different names; or if they are different, why have they the same
name?'--is an argument not easily answered in the infancy of knowledge.
The modern philosopher has always been taught the lesson which he still