784 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Although Hooke's " True Method " was not published until after 

 his death, we may safely attribute it to an early stage of his career. 

 He was a man whose ideas did not change, but were superseded. 

 They retained their original form, but were crowded out of sight by 

 the multitude of new arrivals. Now we have evidence to show that, 

 without wholly abandoning his early faith in the efficacy of his " Phil- 

 osophical Algebra," his confidence in an approaching renovation of 

 science was replaced, later in life, by a conviction of its infinite com- 

 plexity and extent. In the preface to a volume of " Lectures," published 

 in 1G74, he says : * 



For as there is scarce one subject of millions that may be pitched upon, but 

 to write an exact and complete history thereof would require the whole time 

 and attention of a man's life, and some thousands of inventions and observations 

 to accomplish it: so on the other side no man is able to say that he will com- 

 plete this or that inquiry, whatever it be (the greatest part of invention being 

 but a lucky hit of chance, for the most part not in our own power). 'Twill be 

 much better, therefore, to embrace the influences of Providence, and to be dili- 

 gent in the inquiry of everything we meet with. For we shall quickly find that 

 the number of considerable observations and inventions this way collected will 

 a hundredfold outstrip those that are found by design. No man but hath some 

 lucky hits and useful thoughts on this or that subject he is conversant about, the 

 regarding and communicating of which might be a means to other persons highly 

 to improve them. . . . This way is also more grateful both to the writer and the 

 reader, who proceed with a fresh stomach upon variety, but would be weary and 

 dull'd if necessitated to dwell too long upon one subject! 



Thus we see that discovery, which speculation had proclaimed to 

 be the infallible result of system, was by experience declared to be the 

 lucky outcome of chance. Investigators had previously been com- 

 manded to march in a compact army along the highway of method 

 toward the metropolis of knowledge ; they were now warned to dis- 

 perse in all possible directions into the wilderness of phenomena, and 

 beat the bushes of nature for what game they might contain. That 

 one view was equally misleading with the other is obvious ; that one 

 should form the reaction from the other was inevitable. Hooke's rea- 

 sons for discursiveness were not so much the guide of his conduct as 

 its apology. His position as Curator of Experiments to a body inor- 

 dinately greedy of scientific novelty suggested a wide range of subjects 

 for inquiry, which his native versatility induced him to embrace to its 

 fullest extent. The journals and registers of the Royal Society alone 

 convey, by their records, an adequate idea of his prodigious activity 

 of mind, fertility of resource, and experimental skill. Astronomy, op- 

 tics, acoustics, thermotics, pneumatics, hydrostatics, magnetism, artd 

 chemistry ; geology, physiology, meteorology, and psychology all in 

 turn engaged his attention, and all in turn received illustrations from 



* " Posthumous Works," p. 29. 



f " An Attempt to prove the Motion of the Earth," London, 1674. 



