164 



DISCOVERY 



en. vi 



they nor the prophet who bases his prediction upon 

 existing knowledge can forecast with any confidence 

 the character of new discoveries. It is often easy to 

 foretell the development and further application of 

 knowledge already acquired, but this system of extra- 

 polation of curves of existing conditions cannot take 

 into consideration the discovery of new factors which 

 may alter, and frequently do alter, the trend of tendency. 

 Even an author like Mr. H. G. Wells, with wide scientific 

 learning upon which to build his brilliant romances, 

 could not anticipate such discoveries as wireless tele- 

 graphy, Rontgen rays or radium, though he could fore- 

 see extensions of existing knowledge, and visualise social 

 effects of progressive science and invention. 



Science advances by opening completely new fields of 

 knowledge upon which the literary man or investigator 

 may exercise their intellectual activities, and the 

 directions in which these domains are to be found are 

 rarely indicated with success in romantic or in scientific 

 literature. Because it is impossible to know what 

 future work will bring forth, purely imaginative forecasts 

 of things to come are probably as much, or as little, to 

 be depended upon as strictly logical conclusions based 

 upon accomplished fact. True it is that " whether 

 there be prophecies, they shall fail ; whether there be 

 tongues, they shall cea.se ; whether there be knowledge, 

 it shall vanish away." 





