SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM. Ill 



of intellectual penetration into this penumbral region which 

 surrounds actual knowledge is not, as some seem to think, 

 dependent upon method, but upon the genius of the in- 

 vestigator. There is, however, no genius so gifted as not 

 to need control and verification. The profoundest minds 

 know best that Nature's ways are not at all times their 

 ways, and that the brightest flashes in the world of 

 thought are incomplete until they have been proved to 

 have their counterparts in the world of fact. Thus the^ 

 vocation of the true experimentalist may be defined as 

 the continued exercise of spiritual insight, and its inces- 

 sant correction and realization. His experiments consti- 

 tute a body, of which his purified intuitions are, as it were, 

 the soul. 



Partly through methematical and partly through ex- 

 perimental research, physical science has of late years as- 

 sumed a momentous position in the world. Both in a 

 material and in an intellectual point of view it has pro- 

 duced, and it is destined to produce, immense changes 

 vast social ameliorations, and vast alterations in the popu- 

 lar conception of the origin, rule, and governance of natural 

 things. By science, in the physical world, miracles are 

 wrought, while philosophy is forsaking its ancient meta- 

 physical channels and pursuing others which have been 

 opened or indicated by scientific research. This must be- 

 come more and more the case as philosophical writers 

 become more deeply imbued with the methods of science, 

 better acquainted with the facts which scientific men have 

 won, and with the great theories which they have elaborated. 



If you look at the face of a watch, you see the hour 

 and minute hands, and possibly also a second-hand, moving 

 over the graduated dial. Why do these hands move ? and 

 why are their relative motions such as they are observed 

 to be ? These questions cannot be answered without open- 

 ing the watch, mastering its various parts, and ascertaining 



