222 FRA QMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



and more refrigerated. The light vapor floating around 

 the surface so cooled is condensed upon it, and there 

 accumulates to form the little pearly globe which we call a 

 dew drop. 



Thus the boy finds the simple and homely fact which 

 addressed his senses to be the outcome and flower of the 

 deepest laws. The fact becomes, in a measure, sanctified 

 as an object of thought, and invested for him with a beauty 

 for evermore. He thus learns that things which, at first 

 sight, seem to stand isolated and without apparent brother- 

 hood in Nature are organically united, and finds the 

 detection of such analogies a source of perpetual delight. 

 To enlist pleasure on the side of intellectual performance 

 is a point of the utmost importance; for the exercise of the 

 mind, like that of the body, depends for its value upon the 

 spirit in which it is accomplished. Every physician knows 

 that something more than mere mechanical motion is com- 

 prehended under the idea of healthful exercise that, 

 indeed, being most healthful which makes us forget all 

 ulterior ends in the mere enjoyment of it. What, for 

 example, could be substituted for the action of the play- 

 ground, where the boy plays for the mere love of playing, 

 and without reference to physiological laws; while kindly 

 Nature accomplishes her ends unconsciously, and makes 

 his very indifference beneficial to him. You may have 

 more systematic motions, you may devise means for the 

 more perfect travtion of each particular muscle, but 

 you cannot create the joy and gladness of the game, and 

 where these are absent, the charm and the health of the 

 exercise are gone. The case is similar with the education 

 of the mind. 



The study of Physics, as already intimated, consists of 

 two processes, which are complementary to each other 

 the tracing of facts to their causes, and the logical advance 

 from the cause to the fact. In the former process, called 

 induction, certain moral qualities come into play. The 

 first condition of success is patient industry, an honest 

 receptivity, and a willingness to abandon all preconceived 

 notions, however cherished, if they be found to contradict 

 the truth. Believe me, a self-renunciation which has 

 something lofty in it, and of which the world never hears, 

 is often enacted in the private experience of the true votary 

 of science. And if a man be not capable of this self-renun- 



