26 FKAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



in the apparatus accounted for the anomalous action. 

 In every case of the kind the skill of the pump-maker 

 has been found to be the true remedy. In no case has 

 the pressure of the atmosphere ceased; constancy, as 

 regards the lifting of pump-water, has been hitherto 

 the demonstrated rule of nature. So also as regards 

 Pascal's experiment. His experience has been the uni- 

 versal experience ever since. Men have climbed moun- 

 tains, and gone up in balloons; but no deviation from 

 Pascal's result has ever been observed. Barometers, 

 like pumps, have refused to act; but instead of indicat- 

 ing any suspension of the operations of nature, or any 

 interference on the part of its Author with atmospheric 

 pressure, examination has in every instance fixed the 

 anomaly upon the instruments themselves. It is this 

 welding, then, of rigid logic to verifying fact that Mr. 

 Mozley refers to an ( unreasoning impulse.' 



Let us now briefly consider the case of Newton. 

 Before his time men had occupied themselves with the 

 problem of the solar system. Kepler had deduced, 

 from a vast mass of observations, those general expres- 

 sions of planetary motion known as ' Kepler's laws.' 

 It had been observed that a magnet attracts iron; and 

 by one of those flashes of inspiration which reveal to 

 the human mind the vast in the minute, the general 

 in the particular, it had been inferred, that the force 

 by which bodies fall to the earth might also be an at- 

 traction. Newton pondered all these things. He 

 looked, as was his wont, into the darkness until it be- 

 came entirely luminous. How this light arises we can- 

 not explain; but, as a matter of fact, it does arise. Let 

 me remark here, that this kind of pondering is a pro- 

 cess with which the ancients could have been but im- 

 perfectly acquainted. They, for the most part, found 

 the exercise of fantasy more pleasant than^careful ob- 



