UNFORESEEN RESULTS 27 



thread wherever it goes ; and one cannot say 

 beforehand, I will go in this or that direction. 

 Sometimes a complicated knot puts an end to the 

 unravelling of a certain thread and one picks up 

 another to follow for a time in the hope that some 

 connection between the two will in the end be 

 made plain. It is just so in the research into the 

 phenomena round about us, which is being pursued 

 by the thinkers and experimenters of the world. 

 They may be following many threads but still it is 

 threads that they are following, and they can only 

 move where the threads take them. This is a 

 second principle of great importance. 



There is a third point which we must not forget, 

 which is, that possibilities cannot generally be 

 anticipated. We cannot think ahead as to what 

 it will be possible for us to do, except perhaps 

 that we may hope to acquire powers which other 

 beings possess and we do not. Fishes go under 

 water and Jules Verne supposes that we may 

 sometime do the same, and writes a book about 

 it which is all the more interesting because sub- 

 marines actually do it now. He did not draw a 

 picture of human beings exercising the powers of 

 birds that fly in the air, which is rather curious; 

 probably, even this gifted and most imaginative 

 writer did not anticipate the development of the 

 aeroplane. He described a journey round the 

 moon by a party of adventurers, who travelled 

 in a shell fired from an enormous gun. That was 



