SCIENTIFIC METHOD 77 



in his subject, becoming as truly inspired as is 

 the artist in the act of creation." 



What a famous mathematical teacher, Hop- 

 kins,, "who had had, perhaps, more experience 

 of mathematical minds than any man of his time," 

 said of Clerk Maxwell, may also serve to illustrate 

 our point in regard to genius. His striking words 

 were: "It is not possible for that man to think 

 incorrectly on physical subjects." 



In short, it must be admitted that genius 

 transcends methods. As Prof. Silvanus P. 

 Thompson says in his Life of Lord Kelvin: 



"Observation, experience, analysis, abstraction, 

 imagination, all these are necessary but are they 

 all? Something seems yet wanting to account 

 for what we call the intuition of the master-mind. 

 It is surely more akin to the innate faculty of 

 the great artist than to the trained powers of the 

 analyst or the logician." 



THE FUNDAMENTAL POSTULATE OF SCIENCE. 

 There is one fundamental postulate underlying 

 scientific procedure, a postulate which is verified 

 with every fresh step. It is the postulate of the 

 Uniformity of Nature. This, which may be ana- 

 lysed into a number of postulates, means that for 

 our human purposes there is stability in the 

 properties of things, that the same situations are 

 continually recurring, that there is a routine in 

 the order of Nature a routine without gaps or 



