SCIENTIFIC IVtATERIALlSM. 7? 



pressed or implied, oar 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 veri- 

 fication. 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 

 conjecture. 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 of intellectual 

 penetration into this penumbral region which surrounds 

 actual knowledge is not, as some seem to think, depen- 

 dent upon method, but upon the genius of the investi- 

 gator. There is, however, no genius so gifted as not to 

 need control and verification. The profoundest minds 

 know best that Nature's ways are not at all times their 

 ways, and that the brightest 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 experimentalist may be defined as 

 the continued exercise of spiritual insight, and its inces- 

 sant correction and realisation. His experiments con- 

 stitute a body, of which his purified intuitions are, as it 

 were, the soul. 



Partly through mathematical and partly through 

 experimental 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 

 produced, and it is destined to produce, immense 

 changes vast social ameliorations, and vast alterations 

 in the popular conception of the origin, rule, and govern- 



