Ch. IVJ REMINISCENCES. 95 



there is nothing special in this procedure, many discoverios 

 being made by means of it. I only mention it because, as 

 I watched him at work, the value of this power to an experi- 

 mentor was so strongly impressed upon me. 



Another quality which was shown in his experimental work, 

 was his power of sticking to a subject; he used almost to 

 apologise for his patience, saying that ho could not bear to 

 be beaten, as if this were rather a sign of weakness on his 

 part. He often quoted the saying, " It's dogged as does it ; " 

 and I think doggodncss expresses his framo of mind almost 

 better than perseverance. Perseverance seoms hardly to 

 express his almost fierce desire to force tho truth to reveal 

 itself. Ho often said that it was important that a man should 

 know tho right point at which to give up an inquiry. And 

 I think it was his tendency to pass this point that inclined 

 him to apologise for his perseverance, and gave tho air of 

 doggedness to his work. 



He often said that no one could be a good observer unless 

 ho was an active theoriser. This brings me back to what I 

 said about his instinct for arresting exceptions : it was as 

 though he were chargod with theorising power ready to flow 

 into any channel on the slightest disturbance, so that no fact, 

 however small, could avoid releasing a stream of theory, and 

 thus the fact became magnified into importance. In this way 

 it naturally happened that many untenable theories occurred 

 to him ; but fortunately his richness of imagination was 

 equalled by his power of judging and condemning the thoughts 

 that occurred to him. He was just to his theories, and did 

 not condemn them unheard ; and so it happened that he 

 was willing to test what would seem to most people not at 

 all worth testing. These rather wild trials he called " fool's 

 experiments," and enjoyed extremely. As an example I may 

 mention that finding the seed-leaves of a kind of sensitive plant, 

 to be highly sensitive to vibrations of the table, he fancied that 

 they might perceive the vibrations of sound, and therefore made 

 me play my bassoon close to a plant.* 



The love of experiment was very strong in him, and I can 

 remember the way he would say, " I shan't be easy till I have 

 tried it," as if an outside force were driving him. He enjoyed 

 experimenting much more than work which only entailed 

 reasoning, and when he was engaged on one of his books 

 which required argument and the marshalling of facts, he 

 felt experimental work to be a rest or holiday. Thus, while 



• This is not so much an example of superabundant theorising from a 

 small cause as of his wish to test the most improbable ideas. 



