10 GENERAL VIEW AND BASIS OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. 



because it requires an unusual degree of invention, imagi- 

 nation, and reasoning power, and because its requirements 

 and methods are extremely varied and numerous; it is 

 probably, also, the most difficult, because the discovery of 

 new knowledge is, of all acts, the most allied to creation. 

 The ancients classed inventors with gods. 



All discoveries relate either to new phenomena or to 

 new relations of old phenomena ; and nearly all those 

 in physics and chemistry involve a necessity of placing 

 material substances under new conditions and observing 

 the effect. Discovery in science may be more or less ex- 

 tensive it may consist in rinding some unimportant fact, 

 or in the laborious unravelling and verification of the 

 action of an extensive law or principle ; but in either case 

 it consists in obtaining a clear view of a natural truth 

 hitherto unseen or unrecognised. 



There is a considerable degree of pleasure to an in- 

 telligent mind in the act or process of making a discovery, 

 especially if the discovery is important in itself, or if it 

 is strange, striking, or beautiful. According to Lord 

 Brougham, ' there is a positive pleasure in knowing what 

 we did not know before, especially if it excites our wonder, 

 surprise, or admiration.' Each new discovery also excites 

 a feeling of strength because it adds to our possessions 

 of knowledge, and knowledge is equivalent to mental 

 power. 



Kepler was astonished and delighted when he dis- 

 covered the law that ' the squares of the periodic times of 

 the planets are proportional to the cubes of their distances 

 from the sun.' Cuvier, the great comparative anatomist 

 and osteologist, speaking of his study of bones and 

 animals, said : ' At the voice of comparative anatomy 

 each bone, each fragment, regained its place. I cannot 

 describe the pleasure I felt in finding that as I discovered 



