84 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



knowledge of physical science would be botli friable and 

 incomplete. 



Side by side witli tbe 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 verifi- 

 cation. 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 con- 

 jecture. These guesses and conjectures are by no means 

 leaps in the dark; for knowledge once gamed 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, dependent upon method, 

 but upon the genius of the investigator. There is, how- 

 ever, no genius so gifted as not to need control and veri- 

 fication. The profoundest minds know best that Nature's 

 ways are not at all times their ways, and that the bright- 

 est 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 experimen- 

 talist may be defined as the continued exercise of spirit- 

 ual insight, and its incessant correction and realization. 

 His experiments constitute a body, of which his purified 

 intuitions are, as it were, the soul. 



Partly through mathematical and partly through ex- 

 perimental 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 pro- 

 duced, and it is destined to produce, immense changes — 



