APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 137 



CCLXXXV 



The attempt to form a just conception of the value 

 of work done in any department of hunian knowledge, 

 and of its significance as an indication of the intel- 

 lectual and moral qualities of which it was the pro- 

 duct, is an undertaking which must always be beset 

 with difficulties, and m.ay easily end in making the 

 limitations of the appraiser more obvious than the true 

 worth of that which he appraises. For the judgment 

 of a contemporary is liable to be obscured by intel- 

 lectual incompatibilities and warped by personal 

 antagonisms ; while the critic of a later generation, 

 though he may escape the influence of these sources of 

 error, is often ignorant, or forgetful, of the conditions 

 under which the labours of his predecessors have been 

 carried on. He is prone to lose sight of the fact that 

 without their clearing of the ground and rough- 

 hewing of the foundation-stones, the stately edifice 

 of later builders could not have been erected. 



CCLXXXVI 



The vulgar antithesis of fact and theory is founded 

 on a misconception of the nature of scientific theory, 

 which is, or ought to be, no more than the expression 

 of fact in a general form. Whatever goes beyond 

 such expression is hypothesis ; and hypotheses are 

 not ends, but means. 'They should be regarded as 

 instruments by which new lines of inquiry are 

 indicated ; or by the aid of which a provisional 

 coherency and intelligibility may be given to 

 seemingly disconnected groups of phenomena. The 

 most useful of servants to the man of science, they 

 are the worst of masters. And when the establish- 

 ment of the hypothesis becomes the end, and fact is 

 alluded to only so far as it suits the " Idee," science 

 has no longer anything to do with the business. 



