538 TECHNOLOGY 



mighty force in our service, make possible a process under the con- 

 trol of man, a process which, while having many intermediate objects, 

 has always the same goal. Thus we may primarily study the steam 

 engine with a view to a knowledge of its mechanism, while our ulti- 

 mate aim, if we are to work with complete success, must be so to 

 design its several parts that it may lend itself to the power of steam 

 with the least possible resistance. 



We may conceive of a law of nature as a fixed thing, a Niagara of 

 force; we want to construct a wheel which shall receive its impact 

 and turn its water into fire. Nothing can change or improve the law; 

 the only thing we can do is to make ourselves familiar with it, which 

 may be done either by watching its operation in nature, or by caus- 

 ing it. as it were, to display itself before us bringing together the 

 materials whose interaction it is our purpose to investigate. This we 

 call making an experiment, and it has now become the usual method 

 of studying the laws of nature. To this fact, indeed, must be attrib- 

 uted much of the rapid progress of modern science, as we have no 

 need any longer to wait, as did our ancestors, for nature periodically 

 to marshal her forces and cause them to defile before us. 



This, in general, is all we can do with our environment. What can 

 we do with ourselves? 



In order to study to advantage we must get into line with the laws 

 of the mind, remembering that they are, equally with heat and 

 electricity, the laws of nature. We must make the laws of the mind 

 work for us instead of against us, just as we are seeking to do with 

 the forces external to us. 



We find that to bring us into contact with the outer world nature 

 has given us the five senses, and the wonder is with how small a use 

 of them people manage to get through their lives. The reason is, 

 perhaps, that these senses only present facts to us, and facts, although 

 necessary to thought, require, like other raw materials, to be worked 

 up before they give us ordered knowledge. 



We also find that the apprehension of a fact by the mind requires 

 the exercise of the power of observation. This presupposes sensibil- 

 ity both of the external organ and of the brain centres, and also a 

 certain amount of will-power which prevents the observation from 

 being a mere photographic reproduction of the external world. The 

 observations we speak of must be of a special character. They should 

 be minute like those of Hunter in his study of a deer's horns ; they 

 should be accurate like those which led Adams and Leverrier to the 

 simultaneous discovery of Neptune, and, above all, they should be 

 selective, that is, if we are following up a special point, we should be 

 able to fasten, as it were, on the fact which throws light on the ques- 

 tion at issue, remembering that it is not always or even usually the 

 feature most prominent which will put us on the track of the discov- 





