304 PERSONAL PREPARATION FOR RESEARCH. 



act of quiet study that the noblest, most complex, and 

 most divine powers of tjie mind are exerted. But study 

 alone, however intense, and even when expended upon 

 comous stores of facts, only enables us, by the mental pro- 

 cesses of comparison, generalisation, and inference, to 

 evolve the knowledge which the facts implicitly contain. 

 When expended upon insufficient data, it only produces 

 hypothetical ideas, which may be true or untrue ; and to 

 ascertain whether they are true or not they must be com- 

 pared with additional facts. 



In every scientific question, even with the most intense 

 meditation, men find that they soon come to the limits of 

 new thoughts ; a barrier, like a prison chamber, rises in 

 every direction, which is impassable until new experi- 

 ments are made, or new knowledge which bears upon the 

 question is attained. An infinite number of new ideas 

 cannot be evolved from a limited number of old ones, 

 because the combinations and permutations of thought 

 are limited ; according to the principles of logic, from two 

 premises we may only infer one new proposition. What 

 is true in this respect of a single question and a single 

 investigator, is true of an entire science immediately after 

 it has been closely examined by many original workers ; we 

 cannot further advance it until other sciences which bear 

 upon it have been further investigated. Nor can we evolve 

 from the facts already before us more than a mere fraction 

 of the truth they contain, because the light of other facts is 

 necessary to disclose them. There are subjects and ques- 

 tions, and indeed plenty of them, on which no amount of 

 mere thinking, however great and intense, will alone enable 

 us to solve ; and these are precisely the questions which 

 ill-managed minds continually profess to be able to solve. 

 ' The subtlety of nature far exceeds the subtlety of sense 

 and intellect, so that these fine meditations and specula- 



