302 Mr. C. Tomlinson on the Action of Solids 



by assuming that the atom of these elements is not a 

 simple but a complex structure built up of simpler elements. 

 This hypothesis, put forward by Kopp, Berthelot, and others to 

 account for the seeming exception of carbon &c. to Dulong and 

 Petit's law, yet remains as the most probable means of account- 

 ing for the changes in the specific heats of those bodies, although 

 it is now shown that they obey the above-named law. Before 

 these questions regarding the constitution of the atoms of these 

 elements can be answered, careful researches upon the specific 

 heats of their compounds must be undertaken. L propose to dis- 

 cuss the theoretical bearings of these questions in another instal- 

 ment of this paper. 



Hohenheim, October 1874. 



XXXII. On the Action of Solids in liberating Gas from Solution. 

 By Charles Tomlinson, F.R.S.* 



IF Fact and true Inference were friends and fellow-travellers, 

 or if the latter followed the former at an easy distance, we 

 should always find them on smooth roads and under a cloudless 

 sky. Whoever discovered the one, would be quite sure that the 

 other was close at hand, neither impeded by the quicksands of 

 doubt, nor hidden from view by the fog of hypothesis. Medio- 

 crity would then be as efficient as genius, and we should be 

 constrained to acknowledge the truth of Lord Bacon's assertion, 

 that "our method of discovering the sciences is such as to leave 

 little to the acuteness and strength of wit, and indeed rather 

 to level wit and intellect" f. 



The difference between a non-scientific and a scientific intel- 

 lect is supposed, at least in modern times, to consist in this, 

 that w"hile the one mixes up facts with their inferential ocular 

 spectra in such a way as almost to justify the sarcasm that 

 " there are more false facts than false theories current," the 

 other carefully isolates facts from their theoretical or hypo- 

 thetical shackles, and proclaims from the housetops " we know 

 that these are facts, we infer that this is their explanation." 



And with good reason; for a fact stands out in objective pro- 

 minence, and, as such, must present the same aspect to every 

 sane observer — whereas the inference is eminently subjective, 

 taking its tone and texture from the mind of him who draws it, 

 so that it is exposed to the warping influences of prejudice, of 

 self-esteem which prefers its own theories to nature's truth, of 



* Communicated by the Author. 



t " Nostra vero inveniendi scientias ea est ratio, ut non multum in- 

 geniorum acumini et robori relinquatur ; sed quae ingenia et intellectus 

 fere exscquet." — Novum Organon, lib. i. sect. lxi. 



