THE PARAGRAPH TN GENERAL. 1

The following, upon an abstruse subject, will not, per-
haps, be too difficult for the young reader :

The use of a theory in the real sciences is to help the investigator to
a complete view of all the hitherto discovered facts relating to the
science in question ; it is a collected view, ■Seupla, of all he yet knows in
one. Of course, whilst any pertinent facts remain unknown, no theory
can be exactly true, because every new fact must necessarily, to a greater
or less degree, displace the relation of all the others. A theory, there-
fore, only helps investigation ; it cannot invent or discover. The only
true theories are those of geometry, because in geometry all the prem-
isses are true and unalterable. But to suppose that, in our present
exceedingly imperfect acquaintance with the facts, any theory in chem-
istry or geology is altogether accurate, is absurd : it cannot be true. —
S. T. Coleridge: Table Talk, ii. 198.
Observe how every clause and every word help us to
understand what a theory is, according to Coleridge, and
how far it may be trusted. A mathematician might object
to restricting " true " theories to geometry.
