PROFESSOR IN BERLIN 285 



a preface to his translation of Tyndall's Fragments of Science, 

 where he first distinguishes, and then reunites, the two ways 

 of investigating the coherent sequence of nature by abstract 

 notions, and by copious empirical observations. The first way, 

 which leads by mathematical analysis to the quantitative know- 

 ledge of phenomena, seems to him to be indicated only when 

 the second method has already to some extent opened up the 

 field, and provided an inductive knowledge of the laws for at 

 least some groups of the phenomena which it covers. 



We are then concerned only with the transition to the ultimate 

 and most universal laws, and with deductions from the same in 

 this field. The purely experimental method, on the contrary, 

 leads to the recognition of Uniformity in the same way as it 

 is grasped by the artist, which Helmholtz had already indicated 

 in his Goethe Lecture as the sensible lively perception of 

 the type of its activity, developing later into the form of pure 

 concept. The two ways must necessarily be concomitant, if we 

 are to escape the danger, on the one hand, of erecting a structure 

 on insecure foundations, on the other of losing sight of the aims 

 of science. 



1 The first discovery of hitherto unknown laws of nature, i. e. 

 of new uniformities in the course of apparently disconnected 

 phenomena, is an affair of wit taking this word in its widest 

 sense and comes about in nearly every case only by comparison 

 of numerous sensory concepts. The completion and emenda- 

 tion of what has been discovered subsequently devolves on the 

 deductive labour of conceptual, and preferably of mathematical 

 analysis, since it all turns finally on equality of quantity/ 



In the autumn holidays of 1871 Helmholtz attended the 

 Meeting of the British Association at Edinburgh, first visiting 

 Mr. Tait at St. Andrews. 



'St. Andrews/ he writes on August 20 to his wife, 'has 

 a beautiful Bay, with fine sands sloping sharply up to the 

 green links. The town itself is built on rocky cliffs. 

 There is a lively society of bathers, elegant ladies and children, 

 and gentlemen (sic) in sporting costumes, playing golf. . . . 

 Mr. Tait thinks of nothing here beyond golfing. I had to go 

 out too ; my first strokes came off after that I hit either the 

 ground or the air. Tait is a peculiar sort of savage, living here, 

 as he says, only for his muscles, and it was not till to-day, on the 



