For we have no record of such an event:  and if the institutions of one State (say the British) include ceremonies, such as the coronation oath and oath of allegiance, which may be remnants of an original contract, they may nevertheless be of comparatively recent origin; whereas if the institutions of another State (say the Russian) contain nothing that admits of similar interpretation, yet traces of the contract once existing may long since have been obliterated.  Moreover, the actual contents of the contract not having been preserved, every adherent of this hypothesis supplies them at his own discretion, ’according to the dictates of Reason’; and so one derives from it the duty of passive obedience, and another with equal cogency establishes the right of rebellion.

To be verifiable, then, an hypothesis must be definite; if somewhat vague in its first conception (which is reasonably to be expected), it must be made definite in order to be put to the proof.  But, except this condition of verifiability, and definiteness for the sake of verifiability, without which a proposition does not deserve the name of an hypothesis, it seems inadvisable to lay down rules for a ‘legitimate’ hypothesis.  The epithet is misleading.  It suggests that the Logician makes rules for scientific inquirers; whereas his business is to discover the principles which they, in fact, employ in what are acknowledged to be their most successful investigations.  If he did make rules for them, and they treated him seriously, they might be discouraged in the exercise of that liberty of hypothesising which is the condition of all originality; whilst if they paid no attention to him, he must suffer some loss of dignity.  Again, to say that a ‘legitimate hypothesis’ must explain all the facts, at least in the department for which it is invented, is decidedly discouraging.  No doubt it may be expected to do this in the long run when (if ever) it is completely established; but this may take a long time:  is it meanwhile illegitimate?  Or can this adjective be applied to Newton’s corpuscular theory of light, even though it has failed to explain all the facts?

Sec. 3.  Given a verifiable hypothesis, however, what constitutes proof or disproof?

(1) If a new agent be proposed, it is desirable that we should be able directly to observe it, or at least to obtain some evidence of its existence of a different kind from the very facts which it has been invented to explain. Thus, in the discovery of Neptune, after the existence of such a planet outside the orbit of Uranus had been conjectured (to account for the movements of the latter), the place in the heavens which such a body should occupy at a certain time was calculated, and there by means of the telescope it was actually seen.