And we owe science to the combined energies of individual men of genius, rather than to any tendency to progress inherent in civilization.

We receive the truths of science by compulsion. Nothing but ignorance is able to resist them.

Let one persuade many, and he becomes confirmed and convinced, and cares for no better evidence.

The very hope of experimental philosophy, its expectation of constructing the sciences into a true philosophy of nature, is basedon induction, or, if you please, the a priori presumption, that physical causation is universal; that the constitution of nature is written in its actual manifestations, and needs only to be deciphered by experimental and inductive research; that it is not a latent invisible writing, to be brought out by the magic of mental anticipation or metaphysical mediation.

If they are, then the only ultimate truths are the particulars of concrete experience, and no postulate or general assumption is inherent in science until its proceedings become systematic, or the truths already reached give direction to further research.

The pains of disconcerted or frustrated habits, and the inherent pleasure there is in following them, are motives which nature has put into our wills without generally caring to inform us why; and she sometimes decrees, indeed, that her reasons shall not be ours.

The questions of philosophy proper are human desires and fears and aspirations - human emotions - taking an intellectual form.