Page:The Harveian oration (electronic resource) - Royal College of Physicians, 1881 (IA b20411911).pdf/12

 the greatest hindrances to progress has arisen, as it seems to me, from a misunderstanding of what Bacon meant. To many, it conveys no idea beyond that of the dry accumulation of facts, in the hope that some great truth may be elicited from their comparison. All honour to those who, in the past as in the present day, have made, and are making, our knowledge of various departments of medicine and the allied sciences more full and complete. But theirs is not the path which leads to such discoveries as those of Harvey and Newton. They have missed the first link in the chain. If I may venture so to speak of those who have done so much, they have missed the grasp of some great truth that ought to link together all those details over which the best energies of their minds have been spent. It cannot be too often repeated, with reference to this subject, that no two consecutive facts are exactly alike, and that, as a consequence, the second observation does not fully confirm the first, but of necessity differs from it, in some particulars, to a greater or less extent. A mind that has grasped the cause of the successive facts, will regard only the differences, and seek for their explanation : a mind that labours after their simple enumeration will regard only the analogies. It is true that, by adding together the results of a large number of well-recorded instances, we obtain a general average, which is more or less correct in