ADVANTAGES OF PREVIOUS SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 293 



CHAPTER XXX. 



ADVANTAGES OF PREVIOUS SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 



It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships 

 tost upon the sea ; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle 

 and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below ; but no 

 pleasure is comparable to the standing on the vantage ground of 

 truth (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always 

 calm and serene), and to see the errors and wanderings, and 

 mists and tempests, in the vale below : so always that this pro- 

 spect be with pity and not with swelling or pride. BACON. 



ALL great discoverers have possessed extensive knowledge. 

 A discoverer cannot work without materials for thought, 

 any more than without substances to experiment with, 

 From nothing nothing can come ; even original research 

 does not create ideas, although it is sometimes said to do 

 so. Existing knowledge is the basis of future discovery ; 

 all our knowledge of the future is implicitly wrapped up 

 in nature ; we require to stand upon the terra-firma of the 

 known, in order to stretch outwards into the darkness and 

 uncertainty of the unknown. ' New knowledge, when to 

 any purpose, must come by contemplation of old know- 

 ledge, in every matter which concerns thought/ ' All the 

 men who are now called discoverers, in every matter ruled 

 by thought, bave been men versed in the minds of their 

 predecessors, and learned in what had been before them. 

 There is not one exception.' ' It is remarkable how many 

 of the greatest names in all departments of knowledge 

 have been real antiquaries in their several subjects.' 1 



1 A. de Morgan, A Budget of Paradoxes, p. 4. 



