Then you would be adrift again. The fact of it
being a humming-bird would be a new fact which you had not taken into
account, and for which your old explanation was not sufficient; and
you would have to try a new induction--to use your common sense
afresh--saying, "I have not to explain merely how a dead bird got
here, but how a dead humming-bird."
And now, if your imaginative friend chimed in triumphantly with: "Do
you not see that I was right after all? Do you not see that it fell
from the clouds? that it was swept away hither, all the way from
South America, by some south-westerly storm, and wearied out at last,
dropped here to find rest, as in a sacred-place?" what would you
answer? "My friend, that is a beautiful imagination; but I must
treat it only as such, as long as I can explain the mystery more
simply by facts which I do know. I do not know that humming-birds
can be blown across the Atlantic alive. I do know they are actually
brought across the Atlantic dead; are stuck in ladies' hats. I know
that ladies visit the cathedral; and odd as the accident is, I prefer
to believe, till I get a better explanation, that the humming-bird
has simply dropped out of a lady's hat." There, again, you would be
speaking common sense; and using, too, sound inductive method; trying
to explain what you do not know from what you do know already.
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