208 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



this: Abandoning all disguise, the confession I feel 

 bound to make before you is, that I prolong the vision 

 backward across the boundary of the experimental 

 evidence, and discern in that Matter which we, in our 

 ignorance, and notwithstanding our professed rever- 

 ence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with oppro- 

 brium, the promise and potency of every form and 

 quality of life.' To call it a ' chorus of dissent/ as my 

 Catholic critic does, is a mild way of describing the 

 storm of opprobrium with which this statement has 

 been assailed. But the first blast of passion being past, 

 I hope I may again ask my opponents to consent to 

 reason. First of all, I am blamed for crossing the 

 boundary of the experimental evidence. This, I reply, 

 is the habitual action of the scientific mind at least 

 of that portion of it which applies itself to physical in- 

 vestigation. Our theories of light, heat, magnetism, 

 and electricity, all imply the crossing of this boundary. 

 My paper on the ' Scientific Use of the Imagination,' 

 and my ' Lectures on Light/ illustrate this point in the 

 amplest manner; and in the Article entitled ' Matter 

 and Force ' in the present volume I have sought, inci- 

 dentally, to make clear, that in physics the experiential 

 incessantly leads to the ultra-experiential; and that 

 out of experience there always grows something finer 

 than mere experience, and that in their different powers 

 of ideal extension consists, for the most part, the differ- 

 ence between the great and the mediocre investigator. 

 The kingdom of science, then, cometh not by observa- 

 tion and experiment alone, but is completed by fixing 

 the roots of observation and experiment in a region in- 

 accessible to both, and in dealing with which we are 

 forced to fall back upon the picturing power of the 

 mind. 



Passing the boundary of experience, therefore, does 



