It is thus that philosophers have judged, with regard to the effects of
fire and water upon mineral substances below the bottom of the sea,
from what their chemistry had taught them to believe concerning bodies
exposed to those agents in the atmosphere or on the surface of the
earth. If in those two cases the circumstances were the same, or
similar, consequently the conditions of the action not changed, then,
the inductive reasoning, which they employ in that comparison, would be
just; but, so far as it is evidently otherwise, to have employed that
inductive conclusion for the explanation of mineral appearances, without
having reason to believe that those changed circumstances of the case
should not make any difference in the action or effect, is plainly to
have transgressed the rules of scientific reasoning; consequently,
instead of being a proper physical conclusion, it is only that imperfect
reasoning of the vulgar which, by comparing things not properly analysed
or distinguished, is so subject to be erroneous. This vague reasoning,
therefore, cannot be admitted as a part of any geological or mineral
theory.
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