436 ACTUAL WORKING IN ORIGINAL RESEARCH. 



men must be active whether they are willing or not, and 

 the great problem of life" is not so much how to exercise the 

 greatest physical activity or mental enthusiasm, as how to 

 properly excite, transmute and direct that activity. The 

 most Godlike ability is not mere activity ', but a rational 

 use of it ; and a properly directed body and mind is far 

 more important than physical power, or unregulated mental 

 action. Unregulated human power is often dangerous, and 

 abundance of examples of the evil effects of it may be seen 

 in the records of crime, in sectarian and political strife, 

 and in lunatic asylums. A steam-boiler without a valve, a 

 steam-engine without a governor or fly-wheel to regulate 

 the speed, is a most dangerous instrument, and equally so 

 are the actions of men when not regulated by knowledge 

 and the powers of comparison and inference. 



The great effect of minute static conditions is manifest 

 in a large variety and number of phenomena in every 

 science without exception. For instance, the very smallest 

 proportion of foreign substances dissolved in water greatly 

 affects the phenomena of osmose, c pedesis,' and electric 

 conduction resistance of that liquid ; the electric conduc- 

 tibility of copper is greatly diminished by a minute trace 

 of arsenic in that metal ; and that of alcohol is con- 

 spicuously affected by the most minute traces of various 

 dissolved substances. A minute proportion of tin also 

 considerably diminishes the ductility of gold. 



Conditions are of various kinds, and may be conveniently 

 divided into real and apparent, immediate and remote, 

 essential and non-essential, accidental, absorbing, exciting, 

 releasing, transmuting, deflecting, guiding, limiting, acce- 

 lerating, neutral, obstructive, preventive, &c. Those which 

 are non-essential, accidental or neutral, I class under the 

 separate head of coincidences for the sake of convenience 

 of treatment, and because they are merely accompaniments 



