in their
interest in working it out; by successive corrections "to save
appearances," it attained at last to a descriptive sort of truth, which
was of great practical utility; it also occasioned the invention of
technical terms, and, in general digested the whole body of observations
and prepared them for assimilation by a better hypothesis in the fulness
of time. Whewell even defends the maxim that "Nature abhors a vacuum,"
as having formerly served to connect many facts that differ widely in
their first aspect. "And in reality is it not true," he asks, "that
nature _does_ abhor a vacuum, and does all she can to avoid it?" Let no
forlorn cause despair of a champion! Yet no one has accused Whewell of
Quixotry; and the sense of his position is that the human mind is a
rather feeble affair, that can hardly begin to think except with
blunders.

The progress of science may be plausibly attributed to a process of
Natural Selection; hypotheses are produced in abundance and variety, and
those unfit to bear verification are destroyed, until only the fittest
survive. Wallace, a practical naturalist, if there ever was one, as well
as an eminent theorist, takes the same view as Whewell of such
inadequate conjectures. Of 'Lemuria,' an hypothetical continent in the
Indian Ocean, once supposed to be traceable in the islands of
Madagascar, Seychelles, and Mauritius, its surviving fragments, and
named from the Lemurs, its characteristic denizens, he says (_Island
Life_, chap. xix.) that it was "essentially a provisional hypothesis,
very useful in calling attention to a remarkable series of problems in
geographical distribution [of plants and animals], but not affording the
true solution of those problems." We see, then, that 'provisional
hypotheses,' or working hypotheses,' though erroneous, may be very
useful or (as Whewell says) necessary.

Hence, to be prolific of hypotheses is the first attribute of scientific
genius; the first, because without it no progress whatever can be made.
And some men seem to have a marked felicity, a sort of instinctive
judgment even in their guesses, as if their heads were made according to
Nature. But others among the greatest, like Kepler, guess often and are
often wrong before they hit upon the truth, and themselves, like Nature,
destroy many vain shoots and seedlings of science for one that they find
fit to live. If this is how the mind works in scientific inquiry (as it
certainly is, with most men