ON THE STUDY OF PHYSICS. 293 



have indeed opened to us treasuries of power of which 

 antiquity never dreamed. But while we lord it over 

 Matter, we have thereby become better acquainted with 

 the laws of Mind; for to the mental philosopher the 

 study of Physics furnishes a screen against which the 

 human spirit projects its own image, and thus be- 

 comes capable of self-inspection. 



Thus, then, as a means of intellectual culture, the 

 study of Physics exercises and sharpens observation: it 

 brings the most exhaustive logic into play: it com- 

 pares, abstracts, and generalizes, and provides a mental 

 scenery appropriate to these processes. The strictest 

 precision of thought is everywhere enforced, and pru- 

 dence, foresight, and sagacity are demanded. By its 

 appeals to experiment, it continually checks itself, and 

 thus walks on a foundation of facts. Hence the exer- 

 cise it invokes does not end in a mere game of intel- 

 lectual gymnastics, such as the ancients delighted in, 

 but tends to the mastery of Nature. This gradual con- 

 quest of the external world, and the consciousness of 

 augmented strength which accompanies it, render the 

 study of Physics as delightful as it is important. 



With regard to the effect on the imagination, cer- 

 tain it is that the cool results of physical induction 

 furnish conceptions which transcend the most daring 

 flights of that faculty. Take for example the idea of 

 an all-pervading ether which transmits a tingle, so to 

 speak, to the finger ends of the universe every time a 

 street lamp is lighted. The invisible billows of this 

 ether can be measured with the same ease and certainty 

 as that with which an engineer measures a base and 

 two angles, and from these finds the distance across the 

 Thames. Now it is to be confessed that there may be 

 just as little poetry in the measurement of an ethereal 

 undulation as in that of the river; for the intellect, 



