Modern culture : its true aims and requirements a series of addresses and arguments on the claims of scientific education / by Professors Tyndall [and others] ; edited by Edward L. Youmans.

Date:
1867
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Modern culture : its true aims and requirements a series of addresses and arguments on the claims of scientific education / by Professors Tyndall [and others] ; edited by Edward L. Youmans. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/442 (page 7)
    molecules. The subjects of Physics proper are, there- fore, those which lie nearest to human perception :—the light and heat of the sun, colour, sound, motion, the loadstone, electrical attractions and repulsions, thunder and lightning, rain, snow, dew, and so forth. The senses of Man stand between these phenomena, between the external world, and the world of thought. He takes his facts from Nature and transfers them to the domain of mind: he looks at them, compares them, observes their mutual relations and connexions, and thus brings them clearer and clearer before his mental eye, until, finally, by a kind of inspiration, he alights upon the cause which unites them. This is the last act of the mind, in this centripetal direction, in its progress from the multiplicity of facts to the central cause on which they depend. But, having guessed the cause, he is not yet contented : he now sets out from his centre and travels in the other direction : he sees that if his guess be true, certain consequences must follow from it, and he appeals to the law and testimony of experiment whether the thing is so. Thus he completes the circuit of thought,—from without inward, from multiplicity to unity, and from within outward, from unity to multi- plicity. He traverses the Hne between cause and effect both ways, and, in so doing, calls all his reasoning powers into play. The mental effort involved in these processes may be justly compared to those exercises of the body which invoke the co-operation of every muscle, and thus confer upon the whole frame the benefits of healthy action. The first experiment a man makes is a physical ex- periment : the suction-pump is but an imitation of the first act of every new-born infant. Nor do I think it