210 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



backward across the boundary of the experimental 

 evidence, and discern in that Matter which we, in our 

 ignorance, and notwithstanding our professed reverence 

 for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, 

 the promise and potency of every form and quality of 

 life.' To call it a ' chorus of dissent,' as my Catholic 

 critic does, is a mild way of describing the storm of 

 opprobrium with which this statement has been assailed. 

 But the first blast of passion being past, I hope I may 

 again ask my opponents to consent to reason. First of 

 all, I am blamed for crossing the boundary of the ex- 

 perimental evidence. This, I reply, is the habitual 

 action of the scientific mind at least of that portion of 

 it which applies itself to physical investigation. Our 

 theories of light, heat, magnetism, and electricity, all 

 imply the crossing of this boundary. My paper on the 

 ' Scientific Use of the Imagination,' and my ' Lectures 

 on Light,' illustrate this point in the amplest manner ; 

 and in the Article entitled ' Matter and Force ' in the 

 present volume I have sought, incidentally, to make 

 clear, that in physics the experiential incessantly leads 

 to the ultra-experiential ; that out of experience there 

 always grows something finer than mere experience, and 

 that in their different powers of ideal extension consists, 

 for the most part, the difference between the great and 

 the mediocre investigator. The kingdom of science, 

 then, cometh not by observation and experiment alone, 

 but is completed by fixing the roots of observation and 

 experiment in a region inaccessible to both, and in 

 dealing with which we are forced to fall back upon the 

 picturing power of the mind. 



Passing the boundary of experience, therefore, does 

 not, in the abstract, constitute a sufficient ground for 

 censure. There must have been something in my par- 

 ticular mode of crossing it which provoked this tremen- 

 dous c chorus of dissent.' 



