VII. 



SCIENTIFIC USE OF TEE IMAGINATION. 



" Lastly, physical investigation more than any thing besides lielps to teach 

 us (fie actual value and right use of the Imagination — of that wondrous 

 family, which, left to ramble uncontrolled, leads us astray into a wilderness of 

 perplexities and errors, a land of mists and shadows ; but which properly con- 

 trolled by experience and reflection, becomes the noblest attribute of man: the 

 source of poetic genius, the instrument of discovery in Science, without the aid 

 of which Newton would never have invented fluxions, nor Davy have decom- 

 posed the earths and alkalies, nor would Columbus have found another Con- 

 tinoit." — Address to the Royal Society by its President, Sir Benjamin 

 Brodie, November 30, 1859. 



I caeried with me to the Alps this year the heavy 

 burden of this evening's work. In the way of new inves- 

 tigation I had nothing complete enough to be brought 

 before you ; so all that remained to me was to fall back 

 upon such residues as I could find in the depths of con- 

 sciousness, and out of them to spin the fibre and weave the 

 web of this discourse. 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 two volumes of poetry, 

 Goethe's " Farbenlehre," and the work on " Logic " recently 

 published by Mr. Alexander Bain. 1 The spur, I am sorry 

 to say, was no match for the integument of dulness it had 



1 One of my critics remarks, that he does not see the wit of calling 

 Goethe's " Farbenlehre" and Bain's " Logic," " two volumes of poetry." 

 Nor do I. 



