BOTANICAL SUBJECTS. 9 



impossibilities. One is always comforted by remembering the 

 famous " eppur si muove " of Gralileo. So much for authority ! 



We should remember that all scientific investigations are not 

 science. Scientific men are explorers — the scouts of science — 

 feeling and seeing in advance of the human army. What they 

 see and theorise about has to be established by proving itself to be 

 conformable with surrounding truths, and then it becomes science — 

 pakki bat, as they say in Hindostan, that is, a true loord. It is 

 incorporated with human knowledge, and eventually becomes 

 the spring of thought and action. Even then a great deal of 

 trimming is often needed, and has to be periodically done by the 

 remorseless shears of philosophy. The philosopher's task is to 

 look at things from a higher standpoint, so as to take in a larger 

 number of facts in one view, and consolidate ideas into a 

 harmonious and organised body of truths. 



As there are collectors of things, so there are collectors of ideas, 

 to be woven into a fabric of philosophy in due course. The facts 

 give rise to the ideas, and the ideas to' the philosophy, which is an 

 organised body of colligated conclusions or theories. 



Philosophy, as I have stated elsewhere, is a weaving together of 

 established facts by means of a theory. What is the use of 

 theories, some one might ask ? Here I would prefer to let 

 Professor Weismann reply, who, in his book " On Heredity," 

 has sprung some new ideas among thinkers. 



At p. 297, he says : — " Facts must be connected together by 

 theories, if science is to advance." 



" Science is impossible without hypotheses and theories." 



" Just as theories are valueless \\ithout a firm basis of facts, so 

 the mere collection of facts, without relation and without cohesion 

 is utterly valueless." 



At p. 336, he further says : — " Nothing impresses the stamp of 

 truth upon an hypothesis more than the fact that its light renders 

 intelligible not only those facts for the explanation of which it has 

 been framed, but also other and more distantly related groups of 

 phenomena." 



The process of getting at the bottom of the truths, reflected by 

 isolated facts, is sufficiently indicated by the following statement 

 of Weismann's : — 



At p. 296, he says : — " We cannot proceed synthetically and 

 deductively building up the phenomena from below ; but we must. 



