SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM. 77 



expressed or implied, our knowledge of physical science 

 would be both friable and incomplete. 



Side by side with the mathematical method we have 

 the method of experiment. Here from a starting- 

 point furnished by his own researches or those of 

 others, the investigator proceeds by combining intu- 

 ition and verification. He ponders the knowledge he 

 possesses, and tries to push it further; he guesses, and 

 checks his guess; he conjectures, and confirms or ex- 

 plodes his conjecture. These guesses and conjectures 

 are by no means leaps in the dark; for knowledge once 

 gained casts a faint light beyond its own immediate 

 boundaries. There is no discovery so limited as not to 

 illuminate something beyond itself. The force of in- 

 tellectual 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 investigator. 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 ex- 

 perimentalist may be defined as the continued exercise 

 of spiritual insight, and its incessant correction and 

 realisation. His experiments constitute a "body, of 

 which his purified intuitions are, as it were, the soul. 



Partly through mathematical and partly through 

 experimental research, physical science has, of late 

 years, assumed a momentous position in the world. 

 Both in a material and in an intellectual point of view- 

 it has produced, and it is destined to produce, immense 

 changes vast social ameliorations, and vast alterations 

 in the popular conception of the- origin, rule, and gov- 



