to solve this or that problem; but
whether he can so far unravel the tangled threads of the matter with
which he has to deal, as to weave them into a definite problem at
all ... If his eye seem dim, he must look steadfastly and with hope
into the misty vision, until the very clouds wreathe themselves into
definite forms. If his ear seem dull, he must listen patiently and
with sympathetic trust to the intricate whisperings of Nature--the
goddess, as she has been called, of a hundred voices--until here and
there he can pick out a few simple notes to which his own powers can
resound. If, then, at a moment when he finds himself placed on a
pinnacle from which he is called upon to take a perspective survey of
the range of science, and to tell us what he can see from his vantage
ground; if at such a moment after straining his gaze to the very verge
of the horizon, and after describing the most distant of well-defined
objects, he should give utterance also to some of the subjective
impressions which he is conscious of receiving from regions beyond; if
he should depict possibilities which seem opening to his view; if he
should explain why he thinks this a mere blind alley and that an open
path; _then the fault and the loss would be alike ours if we refused to
listen calmly, and temperately to form our own judgment on what we
hear; then assuredly it is we who would be committing the error of
confounding matters of fact with matters of opinion, if we failed to
discriminate between the various elements contained in such a
discourse, and assumed that they had been all put on the same
footing_.'

*****

While largely agreeing with him, I cannot quite accept the setting in
which Professor Virchow places the confessedly abortive attempts to
secure an experimental basis for the doctrine of spontaneous
generation. It is not a doctrine 'so discredited' that some of the
scientific thinkers of England accept 'as the basis of all their
views of life.' Their induction is by no means thus limited. They
have on their side more than the 'reasonable probability' deemed
sufficient by Bishop Butler for practical guidance in the gravest
affairs, that the members of the solar system which are now discrete
once formed a continuous mass; that in the course of untold ages,
during which the work of condensation, through the waste of heat in
space, went on, the planets were detached; and that our present sun is
the residual nucleus of the floccul