2 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



attempting to put in generalized form the first case of a locus which the 

 class had studied, viz., that the perpendicular bisector of a straight line 

 is the locus of all points (in the plane of the two lines) equally distant 

 from the extremities of that line. 



The method of the Chinese philosophers was a priori, and it seems- 

 that they adopted this course, not through ignorance of the experimental 

 method, but from choice. The maxim of Confucius that "knowledge 

 comes from the study of things " could not be more out of place than it 

 is in his pages. The Chinese claim that their sage wrote a treatise on 

 the experimental study of nature, but that it was lost; and thus they 

 explain the backwardness of their country in experimental sciences. 



Practical as the Chinese confessedly are, it is rather remarkable that 

 in the study of nature their philosophers have made practically no use 

 of the inductive method, though it appears that some of them at least 

 had glimmers of its virtue as early as five hundred years before Gilbert 

 and Bacon. In the writings of the brothers Cheng there is the follow- 

 ing question and answer : 



One asked whether, to arrive at a knowledge of nature, it is necessary to 

 investigate each particular object; or may not some one thing be seized upon 

 from which the knowledge of many things may be derived. 



The master replied : " A comprehensive knowledge of nature is not so easily 

 acquired. You must examine one thing to-day and another thing to-morrow, and 

 when you have accumulated a store of facts, your knowledge will burst its shell 

 and come forth into fuller light, connecting all the particulars by general laws ! ' ' 



"We say they had glimmers of the virtue of the inductive method, for 



it is hardly to be asserted that a philosopher really appreciated a method 



which neither he nor his disciples practised, but merely spoke of once. 



Contrast with the quotation just given this saying of Chang, the second 



of the five great thinkers of the Sung dynasty: 



To know nature, you must first know Heaven. If you have pushed your 

 science so far as to know Heaven, then you are at the source of all things. 

 Knowing their evolution you can tell what ought to be, and what ought not to 

 be, without waiting for any one to inform you. 



Between these two dicta we see the parting of the ways — one lead- 

 ing only to a maze of hazy unverified and unverifiable speculations, the 

 other destined to bring any philosopher who followed it into the 

 presence of valid generalizations based on observation; and we see the 

 sages of China choosing the wrong pathway, vainly seeking a short cut 

 to universal knowledge by following what they considered by the light 

 of inner reasoning to be the order of nature, instead of laboriously study- 

 ing one thing at a time in order to connect " all the particulars by 

 geaeral laws." Had her early thinkers taken the suggestion of the 

 Chengs as their guiding star, China might to-day be the dean, instead 

 of the most backward pupil in the school of science. 



2. Spirit of Inaccuracy. — There is no more vexing factor in the life 



