I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts and grinding out conclusions.

My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.

I love fools' experiments. I am always making them.

For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I arrived.

I must begin with a good body of facts and not from a principle (in which I always suspect some fallacy) and then as much deduction as you please.

I am not an idiot, and I'm not a Pollyanna sort of kumbaya type.