which resemble each other but are not really the same. There are a number of phenomena which co-exist or follow each other without this order of co-existence or succession being necessary or constant. In other words, there are resemblances which are the marks of something, as a logician would say, and others which are not the marks of anything; there are relations of time and space which are the expression of a law; there are some which are accidental, and may possibly never be reproduced.
It would be a wonderful advantage if every scientific specialist would make out a list of the non-significant properties that he recognises in matter. The chemist, for example, would show us that specific weight has hardly any value in diagnosis, that the crystalline form of a salt is often not its own, that its colour especially is almost negligible because an immense number of crystals are white or colourless, that precipitation by a given substance does not ordinarily suffice to characterise a body, and so on. The botanist, on his part, would show us that, in determining plants, absolute dimension is less important than proportion, colour less important than form, certain structures of organs less important than others. The pathologist would teach us that most pathological symptoms have but a trivial value; the cries, the enervation, the agitation
