364 PERSONAL PREPARATION FOR RESEARCH. 



invention, except the talent of rapidly calling before us 

 the many possibilities,* and selecting the appropriate one ? 

 It is true that when we have rejected all the inadmissible 

 suppositions, they are often quickly forgotten, and few 

 think it necessary to dwell on these discarded hypotheses, 

 and on the process by which they were condemned. But 

 all who discover truths must have reasoned upon many 

 errors to obtain each truth ; every accepted doctrine must 

 have been one chosen out of many examined. If many 

 of the guesses of philosophers of bygone times now appear 

 fanciful and absurd because time and observation have re- 

 futed them, others, which at the time were equally gratui- 

 tous, have been confirmed in a manner which makes them 

 appear marvellously sagacious. To form hypotheses, and 

 then employ much labour and skill in refuting, if they do 

 not succeed in establishing them, is a part of the usual 

 process of inventive minds. Such a proceeding belongs to 

 the rule of the genius of discovery rather than (as has 

 often been taught in modern times) to the exception.'' l 



Every eminent scientific investigator has a vivid 

 scientific fancy ; Faraday, for example, had a most rapid 

 and varied power of imagining new hypotheses, and 

 Kepler was most fruitful in fanciful ideas. Brewster says : 

 ' It is often some hidden relation, some deep-seated 

 affinity which is required to complete, or rather to consti- 

 tute, a great discovery ; and this relation is often discovered 

 amongst the wildest conceptions and fancies after they have 

 been sobered down by the application of experiment and 

 observation.' No hypothesis is intrinsically absurd, except 

 those which contradict the fundamental truths of nature 

 or of the sciences. 



Probably no part of the occupation of an original 



Whewell, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. ii. pp. 219-222. 



