RESULTS AND LIMITS OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD. 455 



Ninth Bridgwater Treatise! 1 , Mr. Babbage has pointed 

 out that if we had power to follow and detect the minutest 

 effects of any disturbance, each particle of existing matter 

 must be a register of all that has happened. * The track 

 of every canoe of every vessel that has yet disturbed 

 the surface of the ocean, whether impelled by manual 

 force or elemental power, remains for ever registered 

 in the future movement of all succeeding particles which 

 may occupy its place. The furrow which it left is, indeed, 

 instantly filled up by the closing waters ; but they draw 

 after them other and larger portions of the surrounding 

 element, and these again, once moved, communicate mo 

 tion to others in endless succession. We may even say 

 that The air itself is one vast library, on whose pages 

 are for ever written all that man has ever said or even 

 whispered. There, in their mutable but unerring charac 

 ters, mixed with the earliest, as well as the latest sighs 

 of mortality, stand for ever recorded, vows unredeemed, 

 promises unfulfilled, perpetuating in the united move 

 ments of each particle, the testimony of man s changeful 



will 1 . 



When we read truthful reflections such as these, we 

 may congratulate ourselves that we have been endowed 

 with minds which,- rightly employed, can form some esti 

 mate of their incapacity, to trace out and account for 

 all that proceeds in the simpler actions of material nature. 

 It ought to be added that, wonderful as is the extent 

 of physical phenomena open to our investigation, intel 

 lectual phenomena are yet vastly more extensive. Of 

 this I might present one satisfactory proof were space 

 available by pointing out that the mathematical functions 

 employed in the calculations of physical science, form an 

 infinitely small fraction of the functions which may be 



p Ninth Bridgwater Treatise, p. 115- 

 &amp;lt;l Ibid. p. 113. 



