26 GENERAL VIEW AND BASIS OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. 



One cause of our being probably ignorant, even at the 

 present time, of some of the grandest truths of nature is 

 deficiency of special knowledge and experience. At any 

 time a single new instance or experiment may suggest to 

 us an idea of the possible existence of the grandest truth, 

 or confirm a previously conceived hypothesis of its being. 

 For instance, the new experiments of Cagnaird de la 

 Tour caused Sir J. Herschel to suggest the probable con- 

 tinuity of the liquid and vaporous states of matter. 1 Did 

 we also now know the true numerical relations, in the 

 form of what has been termed 'homologous series' and 

 ' periodic functions,' subsisting amongst elementary sub- 

 stances, we might be led to discover the existence and 

 properties of new elementary bodies. Attempts to discover 

 such relations have often been made, and one by Mend- 

 lejeefT has recently been published 2 and verified by the 

 discovery of gallium. 



We are most of us much more apt to congratulate 

 ourselves upon what we have accomplished than to con- 

 template and compare with it what remains to be done. 

 Our knowledge is finite, but our ignorance is nearly infi- 

 nite. Even Newton compared himself to a little child 

 picking up pebbles on the sea-shore, whilst the great 

 ocean of truth lay expanded before him. Of the ultimate 

 nature of time and space we know absolutely nothing ; and 

 of the essential natures of matter and force also nothing 

 is known. The deepest truths require still deeper truths 

 to explain them. The amount of discovery in the future 

 appears likely to be vastly greater than that of the past. 

 The study of science discloses our ignorance of a multi- 

 tude of points which we may fully expect yet to know. 



1 Sir J. Herschel 's Discourse on Natural PMlosojthy, 1850, p. 234. 



2 See Chemical News, No. 839, Dec. 24, 1875. 



