40 PRACTICAL DUTIES OF LIFE. 



which according to received theories ought not to happen, 

 for these are the facts which serve as clues to new dis- 

 coveries." Nor is Herschel alone in this opinion. The 

 most successful scientists of the Victorian age have given 

 us similar advice. " The word * impossible ' is not, to my 

 mind, applicable to matters of philosophy," wrote Professor 

 Huxley ; " that the possibilities of Nature are infinite is an 

 anachronism with which I am wont to worry my friend." 

 Again, Mr. William Crookes, the discoverer of the 

 radiometer, has given us a very clearly expressed argument 

 against what Humboldt called " presumptuous scepticism." 

 He writes, " I prefer to enter upon enquiry with no precon- 

 ceived notions whatever as to what can or cannot be, but 

 with all my senses alert, and ready to convey information 

 to the brain ; believing as I do that we have by no means 

 exhausted all human knowledge or fathomed the depths of 

 all physical forces." Faraday, too, has left on record words 

 which no student of Nature should forget : " Nothing is 

 too wonderful to be true if it is consistent with the laws of 

 Nature, and in such things as these experiment is the best 

 test of such consistency." 



It was in this spirit of unprejudiced enquiry that Robert 

 Boyle noted and often communicated to his personal friends 

 the mental phenomena we have mentioned. The practical 

 duties of life absorbed too much of his time to leave much 



