102 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



Instrument of discovery in Science, without tJie aid of which Netvton 

 would never have invented fluxions, nor Davy have decomposed the 

 earths and alkalies, nor mould Columbus Juive found another Conti- 

 nent.' Address to the Royal Society by its President Sir Benjamin 

 Brodie, November 30, 1859. 



I CARRIED with me to the Alps this year the burden 

 of this evening's work. Save from memory I had 

 no direct aid upon the mountains ; but to spur up the 

 emotions, on which so much depends, as well as to 

 nourish indirectly the intellect and will, I took with 

 me four works, comprising two volumes of poetry, 

 Goethe's ' Farbenlehre,' and the work on ' Logic J 

 recently published by Mr. Alexander Bain. In Groethe, 

 so noble otherwise, I chiefly noticed the self-inflicted 

 hurts of genius, as it broke itself in vain against the 

 philosophy of Newton. Mr. Bain I found, for the most 

 part, learned and practical, shining generally with a 

 dry light, but exhibiting at times a flush of emotional 

 strength, which proved that even logicians share the 

 common fire of humanity. He interested me most 

 when he became the mirror of my own condition. 

 Neither intellectually nor socially is it good for man 

 to be alone, and the sorrows of thought are more 

 patiently borne when we find that they have been 

 experienced by another. From certain passages in 

 his book I could infer that Mr. Bain was no stranger to 

 such sorrows. Speaking for example of the ebb of 

 intellectual force, which we all from time to time 

 experience, Mr. Bain says : ' The uncertainty where to 

 lock for the next opening of discovery brings the pain 

 of conflict and the debility of indecision.' These 

 words have in them the true ring of personal expe- 

 rience. The action of the investigator is periodic. 

 He grapples with a subject of enquiry, wrestles with it, 

 and exhausts, it may be, both himself and it for the 



