there are postulates applicable to the whole of the universe and regarded as rigorously true. If these postulates possess a generality and a certainty which falsify the experimental truths from which they were deduced, it is because they reduce in final analysis to a simple convention that we have a right to make, because we are certain beforehand that no experiment can contradict it. This convention, however, is not absolutely arbitrary; it is not the child of our caprice. We admit it because certain experiments have shown us that it will be convenient, and thus is explained how experiment has built up the principles of mechanics, and why, moreover, it cannot reverse them. Take a comparison with geometry. The fundamental propositions of geometry, for instance, Euclid's postulate, are only conventions, and it is quite as unreasonable to ask if they are true or false as to ask if the metric system is true or false. Only, these conventions are convenient, and there are certain experiments which prove it to us. At the first glance, the analogy is complete, the rôle of experiment seems the same. We shall therefore be tempted to say, either mechanics must be looked upon as experimental science and then it should be the same with geometry; or, on the contrary, geometry is a deductive science, and then we can say the same of mechanics. Such a conclusion would be illegitimate. The experiments which have led us to adopt as more
