Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/454

438, a sad state of feeling is produced, and many mistakes are likely to follow.

Sir William Hamilton's definition of science has for genus "a complement of cognitions," and for differentia "logical perfection of form," and "real truth of matter." The definition is a demand for a certain fullness. We can only conjecture, in the case of any particular science, how much knowledge such a man as Sir William Hamilton would regard as a "complement." But students of science do well to remind themselves that it is impossible to exceed, and very difficult to succeed, and the easiest thing imaginable to fall short. In other words, we have never been able to collect more material of knowledge than the plan of any temple of science could work in, and really did not demand for the completion of the structure, and that very few temples of science have been finished, even in the outline, while all the plain of thought is covered by ruins of buildings begun by thinkers, but unfinished for want of more knowledge. Even where there has been gathered a sufficient amount of knowledge to be wrought by the logical understanding into the form of a science, so that such a mind as Hamilton's would admit it as a science—i. e., a sufficient complement of cognitions of truths put in logical form—another age of labor, in other departments, would so shrink this science that, in order to hold its rank, it would have to work in the matter of more knowledge, and, to preserve its symmetry, be compelled to readjust its architectural outlines. In other words, what is science to one age may not be science to its successor, because that successor may perceive that, although its matter had the character of real truth, and its form the character of logical perfection, as far as it went, nevertheless, there were not enough cognitions; not enough, just because in the later age it was possible to obtain additional cognitions, which could not have been obtained earlier.

And, in point of fact, has not this been the history of each of the acknowledged sciences? And can any significance be assigned to Sir William Hamilton's definition without taking the word "complement" to mean all the cognitions possible at the time? Now, unless at one time men have more cognitions of any subject than at another time, one of two things must be true: either (1) no new phenomena will appear in that department, or (2) no abler observer will arise. But the history of the human mind in the past renders both suppositions highly improbable. If no new phenomena appear, we shall have observers abler than have existed, because, although it were granted that no fresh accessions of intellectual power came to the race, each new generation of observers would have increased ability, because each would have the aid of the instruments and methods of all predecessors. When we go back to consider the immense labor performed by Kepler in his investigations which led to his brilliant discoveries, we feel that if his nerves had given way under his labors, and