338 FKAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



referred to so clearly recognised as now. Our insight 

 regarding them is not that vague and general insight 

 to which our fathers had attained, and which, in early 

 times, was more frequently affirmed by the synthetic 

 poet than by the scientific man. The interdependence 

 of our day has become quantitative expressible by 

 numbers leading, it must be added, directly into that 

 inexorable reign of law which so many gentle people 

 regard with dread. In the domain now under review 

 men of science had first to work their way from dark- 

 ness into twilight, and from twilight into day. There 

 is no solution of continuity in science. It is not given 

 to any man, however endowed, to rise spontaneously 

 into intellectual splendour without the parentage of 

 antecedent thought. Great discoveries grow. Here, 

 as in other cases, we have first the seed, then the ear, 

 then the full corn in the ear, the last member of the 

 series implying the first. Thus, as regards the discov- 

 ery of gravitation with which the name of Newton is 

 identified, notions more or less clear concerning it had 

 entered many minds before Newton's transcendent 

 mathematical genius raised it to the level of a demon- 

 stration. The whole of his deductions, moreover, rested 

 upon the inductions of Kepler. Newton shot beyond 

 his predecessors; but his thoughts were rooted in their 

 thoughts, and a just distribution of merit would assign 

 to them a fair portion of the honour of discovery. 



Scientific theories sometimes float like rumours in 

 the air before they receive complete expression. The 

 doom of a doctrine is often practically sealed, and the 

 truth of one is often practically accepted, long prior to 

 the demonstration of either the error or the truth. 

 Perpetual motion was discarded before it was proved to 

 be opposed to natural law; and, as regards the connec- 

 tion and interaction of natural forces, intimations of 



