84 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



knowledge of physical science would be both friable and 

 incomplete. 



Side by side with the mathematical method we have 

 the method of experiment. Here from a starting-point 

 furnished by his own researches or those of others, the 

 investigator proceeds by combining intuition and verifi- 

 cation. He ponders the knowledge he possesses, and 

 tries to push it further; he guesses, and checks his 

 guess; he conjectures, and confirms or explodes his con- 

 jecture. These guesses and conjectures are by no means 

 leaps in the dark; for knowledge once gained casts a 

 faint light beyond its own immediate boundaries. There 

 is no discovery so limited as not to illuminate something 

 beyond itself. The force o intellectual penetration into 

 this penumbral region which surrounds actual knowledge 

 is not, as some seem to think, dependent upon method, 

 but upon the genius of the investigator. There is, how- 

 ever, no genius so gifted as not to need control and veri- 

 fication. The profoundest minds know best that Nature's 

 ways are not at all times their ways, and that the bright- 

 est flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until 

 they have been proved to have their counterparts in the 

 world of fact. Thus the vocation of the true experimen- 

 talist may be defined as the continued exercise of spirit- 

 ual insight, and its incessant correction and realization. 

 His experiments constitute a body, of which his purified 

 intuitions are, as it were, the soul. 



Partly through mathematical and partly through ex- 

 perimental research, physical science has, of late years, 

 assumed a momentous position in the world. Both in a 

 material and in an intellectual point of view it has pro- 

 duced, and it is destined to produce, immense changes > 



