32 THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE 



No less an authority than Faraday writes : — 

 " The world little knows how many of the thoughts 

 and theories which have passed through the mind of a 

 scientific investigator have been crushed in silence and 

 secrecy by his own severe criticism and adverse examina- 

 tion ; that in the most successful instances not a tenth of 

 the suggestions, the hopes, the wishes, the preliminary 

 conclusions have been realised." 



§ 1 2. — The MetJiod of Science Illustrated 



The reader must not think that I am painting any 

 ideal or purely theoretical method of scientific discovery. 

 He will find the process described above accurately 

 depicted by Darwin himself in the account he gives us of 

 his discovery of the law of natural selection. After his 

 return to England in 1837, he tells us,^ it appeared to 

 him that : — 



" By collecting all facts which bore in any way on the 

 variation of animals and plants under domestication and 

 nature, some light might perhaps be thrown on the whole 

 subject. My first note-book was opened in July 1837. 

 I worked on true Baconian principles,^ and, without any 

 theory, collected facts on a wholesale scale, more especially 

 with respect to domesticated productions, by printed 

 inquiries, by conversation with skilful breeders and 



^ The Life and Letters of Charles Dan.vin, vol. i. p. Zt^. 



2 It is from men like Laplace and Darwin, who have devoted their lives 

 to natural science, rather than from workers in the pure field of conception, 

 like Mill and Stanley Jevons, that we must seek for a true estimate of the 

 Baconian method. Beside Darwin's words we may! place those of Laplace 

 on Bacon : — 



" II a donne pour la recherche de la verite, le precepte et non I'exemple. 

 Mais en insistant avec toute la force de la raison et de I'eloquence, sur la 

 necessite d'abandonner les subtilites insignifiantes de I'ecole, pour se livrer 

 aux observations et aux experiences, et en indiquant la vraie methode de 

 s'elever aux causes generales des phenomenes, ce grand philosophe a con- 

 tribue aux progies immenses que I'esprit humain a faits dans le beau siecle 

 oil il a termine sa carriere " (" Theorie analytique des Probabilites," CEicvres, 

 t. vii. p. clvi.). The carpenter who uses a tool is a better judge of its 

 efficiency than the smith who forges it. For a good sketch of the estimation 

 in which Bacon was held by his scientific contemporaries see the introduction 

 to Prof. Fowler's edition of the Novum Orza)iii?n. 



