Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/622

604 of this masterly investigation, the words wherewith Pasteur himself feelingly alludes to the difficulties and dangers of the experimenter's art came home to me with especial force: "J'ai tant de fois éprouve que dans cet art difficile de l'expérimentation les plus hahiles bronchent à chaque pas, et que l'interprétation des faits n'est pas moins périlleuse."



T is a common observation that a science first begins to be exact when it is quantitatively treated. What are called the exact sciences are no others than the mathematical ones. Chemists reasoned vaguely until Lavoisier showed them how to apply the balance to the verification of their theories, when chemistry leaped suddenly into the position of the most perfect of the classificatory sciences. It has thus become so precise and certain that we usually think of it along with optics, thermotics, and electrics. But these are studies of general laws, while chemistry considers merely the relations and classification of certain objects; and belongs, in reality, in the same category as systematic botany and zoölogy. Compare it with these last, however, and the advantage that it derives from its quantitative treatment is very evident.

The rudest numerical scales, such as that by which the mineralogists distinguish the different degrees of hardness, are found useful. The mere counting of pistils and stamens sufficed to bring botany out of total chaos into some hind of form. It is not, however, so much from counting as from measuring, not so much from the conception of number as from that of continuous quantity, that the advantage of mathematical treatment comes. Number, after all, only serves to pin us down to a precision in our thoughts which, however beneficial, can seldom lead to lofty conceptions, and frequently descends to pettiness. Of those two faculties of which Bacon speaks, that which marks differences and that which notes resemblances, the employment of number can only aid the lesser one; and the excessive use of it must tend to narrow the powers of the mind. But the conception of continuous quantity has a great office to fulfill, independently of any attempt at precision. Far from tending to the exaggeration of differences, it is the direct instrument of the finest generalizations. When 