376 ACTUAL WORKING IN ORIGINAL RESEARCH. 



certain, unless they can easily be made, and would, if suc- 

 cessful, probably yield important results. 



A very good plan, and one which I have adopted on 

 various occasions with perfect success, has been to devise 

 an arrangement, and select a research, in which matter or 

 its forces was placed under new conditions, and trust 

 implicitly to the general truth that every new arrange- 

 ment of matter or force must produce new results. 



In other cases the difficulty is usually overcome by 

 selecting from a stock of hypothetical suggestions and 

 questions those which appear to have the greatest degrees 

 of importance, probability, and ripeness, and adopt the 

 most suitable one. Particular researches are sometimes 

 selected, because they are less expensive. In some cases, 

 however, a research is not, strictly speaking, selected at 

 all, but the investigator is led on from a previous inquiry 

 to another by questions which arise at the time, and, 

 having all the materials and apparatus more ready at hand 

 than if he commenced an entirely different subject, he 

 prefers the former ; for instance, Faraday appears to have 

 been led on to his discovery of the important law of 

 definite electro-chemical action from his immediately 

 preceding experiments on electrolysis and electric con- 

 duction. 1 



Whilst one scientific man expends his time upon 

 comparatively trifling matters, another slowly and per- 

 sistently works out a great idea. Most of the ablest of 

 discoverers appear to have acted, to a large extent, upon 

 the plan of exerting the greater part of their strength 

 upon important subjects, and have selected those ques- 

 tions and experiments which, if they can be solved, or can 

 be made to yield a positive result at all, must yield one of 



1 Life of Faraday, by Dr. H. B. Jones, vol. ii. pp. 20-35. 



