Page:Herschel - A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1831).djvu/90

 centre. To assert the contrary, would not be to rebel against a power, but to deny our own words. But in natural science cause and effect are the ultimate relations we contemplate; and laws, whether imposed or maintained, which, for aught we can perceive, might have been other than they are. This distinction is very important. A clever man, shut up alone and allowed unlimited time, might reason out for himself all the truths of mathematics, by proceeding from those simple notions of space and number of which he cannot divest himself without ceasing to think. But he could never tell, by any effort of reasoning, what would become of a lump of sugar if immersed in water, or what impression would be produced on his eye by mixing the colours yellow and blue.

(67.) We have thus pointed out to us, as the great, and indeed only ultimate source of our knowledge of nature and its laws, ; by which we mean, not the experience of one man only, or of one generation, but the accumulated experience of all mankind in all ages, registered in books or recorded by tradition. But experience may be acquired in two ways: either, first, by noticing facts as they occur, without any attempt to influence the frequency of their occurrence, or to vary the circumstances under which they occur; this is : or, secondly, by putting in action causes and agents over which we have control, and purposely varying their combinations, and noticing what effects take place; this is. To these two sources we must look as the fountains of all natural science. It is not intended, however, by