Turning to our own subject, it is a work of undiminished interest to reflect upon those qualities of mind which lead to great advances in natural knowledge. Nothing, indeed, is less amenable than genius to scientific analysis and explanation. Even definition is out of the question. Buffon said that “genius is patience,” and certainly patience is one of its most requisite components. But no one can suppose that patient labour alone will invariably lead to those conspicuous results which we attribute to genius. In every branch of science, literature, art, or industry, there are thousands of men and women who work with unceasing patience, and thereby ensure moderate success; but it would be absurd to suppose that equal amounts of intellectual labour yield equal results. A Newton may modestly attribute his discoveries to industry and patient thought, and there is reason to believe that genius is unconscious and unable to account for its own peculiar powers. As genius is essentially creative, and consists in divergence from the ordinary grooves of thought and action, it must necessarily be a phenomenon beyond the domain of the laws of nature. Nevertheless, it is always an interesting and instructive work to trace out, as far as possible, the characteristics of mind by which great discoveries have been achieved, and we shall find in the analysis much to illustrate the principles of scientific method.
Error of the Baconian Method.
Hundreds of investigators may be constantly engaged in experimental inquiry; they may compile numberless note-books full of scientific facts, and endless tables of numerical results; but, if the views of induction here maintained be true, they can never by such work alone rise to new and great discoveries. By a system of research they may work out deductively the details of a previous discovery, but to arrive at a new principle of nature is another matter. Francis Bacon spread abroad the notion that to advance science we must begin by accumulating facts, and then draw from them, by a process of digestion, successive laws of higher and higher generality. In protesting against the false method of the scholastic logicians, he exaggerated a partially true philosophy, until it became as false as that which preceded it. His notion of scientific method was a kind of scientific bookkeeping. Facts were to be indiscriminately gathered from every source, and posted in a ledger, from which would emerge in time a balance of truth. It is difficult to imagine a less likely way of arriving at great discoveries. The greater the array of facts, the less is the probability that they will by any routine system of classification disclose the laws of nature they embody. Exhaustive classification in all possible orders is out of the question, because the possible orders are practically infinite in number.
It is before the glance of the philosophic mind that facts must display their meaning, and fall into logical order. The natural philosopher must therefore have, in the first place, a mind of impressionable character, which is affected by the slightest exceptional phenomenon. His associating and identifying powers must be great, that is, a strange fact must suggest to his mind whatever of like nature has previously come within his experience. His imagination must be active, and bring before his mind multitudes of relations in which the unexplained facts may possibly stand with regard to each other, or to more common facts. Sure and vigorous powers of deductive reasoning must then come into play, and enable him to infer what will happen under each supposed condition. Lastly, and above all, there must be the love of certainty leading him diligently and with perfect candour, to compare his speculations with the test of fact and experiment.
Freedom of Theorising.
It would be an error to suppose that the great discoverer seizes at once upon the truth, or has any unerring method of divining it. In all probability the errors of the great mind exceed in number those of the less