.] CHARACTER OF THE EXPERIMENTALIST. 581 



different conformation will meet with suitable regions of 

 research. Nevertheless, there are certain traits which we 

 may discover in all the highest scientific minds. 



The Newtonian Method, the True Organum. 



Laplace was of opinion that the Principia and the 

 Opticks of Newton furnished the best models then avail- 

 able of the delicate art of experimental and theoretical 

 investigation. In these, as he says, we meet with the 

 most happy illustrations of the way in which, from a 

 series of inductions, we may rise to the causes of pheno- 

 mena, and thence descend again to all the resulting 

 details. 



The popular notion concerning Newton's discoveries is 

 that in early life, when driven into the country by the 

 Great Plague, a falling apple accidentally suggested to 

 him the existence of gravitation, and that, availing himself, 

 of this hint, he was led to the discovery of the law of 

 gravitation, the explanation of which constitutes the 

 Principia. It is difficult to imagine a more ludicrous and 

 inadequate picture of Newton's labours. No originality, 

 or at least priority, was claimed by Newton as regards the 

 discovery of the law of the inverse square, so closely 

 associated with his name. In a well-known Scholium l 

 he acknowledges that Sir Christopher Wren, Hooke, and 

 Halley, had severally observed the accordance of Kepler's 

 third 'law of motion with the principle of the inverse 

 square. 



Newton's work was really that of developing the 

 methods of deductive reasoning and experimental verifica- 

 tion, by which alone great hypotheses can be brought to 

 the touchstone of fact. Archimedes was the greatest of 

 ancient philosophers, for he showed how mathematical 

 theory could be wedded to physical experiments; and 

 his works are the first true Organum. Newton is the 

 modern Archimedes, and the Principia forms the true 

 Novum Organum of scientific method. The laws which 

 he established are great, but his example of the manner of 

 establishing them is greater still. Excepting perhaps 



1 Principia, bk. i. Prop. iv. 



