

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 



&quot; Lastly, physical investigation more than any thing besides liclps to teach 

 us tJie actual value and rigid use of the Imagination of that wondrous 

 faculty, which, left to ramble uncontrolled, leads us astray into a wilderness of 

 perplexities and errors, a land of mists and shadows ; but which properly con 

 trolled by experience and reflection, becomes the noblest attribute of man : the 

 source of poetic genius, the instrument of discovery in Science, without the aid 

 of which Neicton would never have invented fluxions, nor Davy have decom 

 posed the earths and alkalies, nor would Columbus have found another Con 

 tinent. 1 1 Address to the Royal Society by its President, Sir Benjamin 

 Brodie, November 30, 1859. 



I CARRIED with me to the Alps this year the heavy 

 burden of this evening s work. In the way of new inves 

 tigation I had nothing complete enough to be brought 

 before you ; so all that remained to me was to fall back 

 upon such residues as I could find in the depths of con 

 sciousness, and out of them to spin the fibre and weave the 

 w r eb of this discourse. Save from memory I had no direct 

 aid upon the mountains ; but to spur up the emotions, on 

 which so much depends, as well as to nourish indirectly the 

 intellect and will, I took with me two volumes of poetry, 

 Goethe s &quot; Farbenlehre,&quot; and the work on &quot; Logic &quot; recently 

 published by Mr. Alexander Bain. 1 The spur, I am sorry 

 to say, was no match for the integument of dulness it had 



1 One of my critics remarks, that he does not see the wit of calling 

 Goethe s &quot; Farbenlehre&quot; and Bain s &quot; Logic,&quot; &quot; two volumes of poetry.&quot; 

 Nor do I. 



