To the thoughtful person it is the method
of the man which constitutes his real greatness, that power of insight
by which he solved the two great problems of the nature of the lever and
of hydrostatic pressure, which form the basis of all static and
hydrostatic science to this day. And yet on that very question of the
lever the great mind of Aristotle babbles--neither sees the thing
itself, nor the way towards seeing it. But since Archimedes spoke, the
thing seems self-evident to every schoolboy. There is something to me
very solemn in such a fact as this. It brings us down to some of the
very deepest questions of metaphysic. This mental insight of which we
boast so much, what is it? Is it altogether a process of our own brain
and will? If it be, why have so few the power, even among men of power,
and they so seldom? If brain alone were what was wanted, what could not
Aristotle have discovered? Or is it that no man can see a thing unless
God shows it him? Is it that in each separate act of induction, that
mysterious and transcendental process which cannot, let logicians try as
they will, be expressed by any merely logical formula, Aristotelian or
other--is it I say, that in each separate act of induction we do not
find the law, but the law is shown to us, by Him who made the law?
Bacon thought so.
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