xxvi.] CHARACTER OF THE EXPERIMENTALIST. 579 



^ccasionally even a wildness ^d^g^~^~^ 



which in a less careful experimentalist would have been 



fatal to the attainment of truth. This is especially apparent 



in a curious paper concerning Eay-vibrations; but fortu- 



nately Faraday was aware of the shadowy character of his 



speculations, and expressed the feeling 7 in words which 



must be quoted. '< I think it likely," h e says^ ''that I 



have made many mistakes in the preceding pa4s for 



even to myself my ideas on this point appear only as the 



shadow of a speculation, or as one of those impres ions 



upon the mind, which are allowable for a time as guides to 



bought and research. He who labours in expeSal 



inquiries knows how numerous these are, and how often 



their apparent fitness and beauty vanish before the7 



and development of real natural truth." If, then thfex 



perimentalist has no royal road to the discovery of the 



truth, it is an interesting matter to consider by whatlo-ical 



procedure he attains the truth 



is rnv n i Vlew f lo ical method > ere 



is really no such thing as a distinct process of induction 



nXt f V S -n fi 7 tely Sma11 that a Collection of 

 complicated facts will fall into an arrangement capable 

 of exhibiting directly the laws obeyed by them The' 

 mathematician might as well expect to integrate his 

 functions by a ballot-box, as the experimental st to draw 

 deep truths from haphazard trials. All induction is birt 

 the inverse application of deduction, and it is b y the 

 inexplicable action of a gifted mind that a multitude of 

 heterogeneous facts are ranged in luminous order as the 

 results of some uniformly acting law. So different, indeed 

 are the qualities of mind required in different branches of 

 science that it would be absurd to attempt to give an 

 exhaustive description of the character of mind which 

 leads to discovery. The labours of Newton could not 



nTtL m e rT mplislie V xcept by a mind of the 



mathematical genius; Faraday, on the other hand, has 

 made the most extensive additions to human knowledge 

 without passing beyond common arithmetic. I do not 

 remember meeting in Faraday's writings with a single 



' femmenteZ Researches in Chemistry and Physics p 

 Ph^losoph^cal Magazine, 3 rd Series, May ,846, vol. xxviSp'. 3 



P p 2 



