EXTRACT XIV. 



ON THE IMAGINATION AS AN INSTRUMENT IN 

 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS, AND ON THE SCIENTIFIC 

 USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 



IMAGINATION as here implied refers to the supplementing, 

 in the regions of abstract and applied science, of the work 

 done by observation and experiment, where necessary for 

 greater completeness of view, of individual sciences or 

 isolated scientific problems, and for the unification of the 

 knowledge of the universe and of proved data by lines of 

 thought relevant to, suggested by, and flowing out of a 

 full and clear realisation of the subject of thought or 

 enquiry in which we may at any time be engaged. It is 

 needless to say that imagination, divorced from exact 

 knowledge, and given licence to ramble unchecked amid 

 the proved possessions of the cultivators of the fields of 

 truth, is not what is meant, neither is it the mere cultiva- 

 tion of the faculty meant, apart from its power to 

 meet the temporary necessities arising in the daily 

 experience of all scientists when they have exhausted 

 their acquired supplies of accepted doctrine and become 

 beholden to their own innate or self-emanating resources 

 when, in fact, they have literally come " to the end of 

 their acquired tether," and feel they but require its 

 lengthening by the use of any other available resources 

 within their reach, as, for example, when they have 

 attained to or reached a psychological moment or point 

 where independent forward action, or acceptance of defeat, 

 have to be at last, and at all hazards, selected. Who will 

 deny any such enquirer after truth under such circum- 



