TRUE NATURE OF SCIENTIFIC PROBLEMS. 317 



causes. As soon as a fact is once known in all its relations, 

 it is therein explained, and the problem of science is at an 

 end. 



Notwithstanding that some may pronounce this a trite 

 assertion, and no matter how many arguments others may 

 bring to oppose it, it remains none the less certain that this 

 primary rule has been too often disregarded even up to the 

 most modern times ; while all the speculative operations of 

 even the most highly gifted minds which, instead of taking 

 firm hold of facts as such, have striven to rise above them, 

 have as yet borne but barren fruit. 



We shall not here discuss the modern naturalistic philoso- 

 phy (Naturphilosophie) further than to say that its character 

 is already sufficiently apparent from the ephemeral existence 

 of its offspring. But even the greatest and most meritorious 

 of the naturalists of antiquity, in order to explain, for exam- 

 ple, the properties of the lever, took refuge in the assertion 

 that a circle is such a marvellous thing that no wonder if mo- 

 tions, taking place in a circle, offer also in their turn most 

 unusual phenomena. If Aristotle, instead of straining his 

 extraordinary powers in meditations upon the fixed point and 

 advancing line, as he calls the circle, had investigated the 

 numerical relations subsisting between the length of the arm 

 of the lever and the pressure exerted, he would have laid the 

 foundation of an important part of human knowledge. 



Such mistakes, committed as they were, in accordance 

 with the spirit of those times, even by a man whose many 

 positive services constitute his everlasting memorial, may 

 serve to point us in the opposite road which leads us surely 

 to the goal. But if, even by the most correct method of in- 

 vestigation, nothing can be attained without toil and industry, 

 the cause is to be sought in that divine order of the world 

 according to which man is made to labour. But it is certain 

 that already immeasurably more means and more toil have 

 been sacrificed to error than were needed for the discovery of 

 the truth. 



