SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 



" Lastly, physical investigation more than any thing besides helps to teach 

 us the 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 tlie aid 

 of which Newton would never have invented jluxions, nor Davy have decom- 

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

 tinent." 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 

 web 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 " Farbenlehre," and the work on " Logic " 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 " Farbenlehre" and Bain's " Logic," " two volumes of poetry." 

 Nor do I. 



