Page:The evolution of worlds - Lowell.djvu/160

128 before his book is published. Then only does the difficulty dawn, with a speed and clarity inversely proportional to the previous relation of the critic to the author. For the author himself is apt to be blind. With the fatal fondness of a parent for his offspring it is rare for the defects to be so glaringly apparent to their perpetrator. At the worst he considers them venial faults which can be glossed away.

Attacking the subject in this judicial spirit, the reader can hardly expect me to satisfy him with a cosmogony entirely home-made, but at best to pursue a happy middle course between creator and critic, advocating only such portions as happen to be my own, while sternly exposing the mistakes of others.

In undertaking the hazardous climb toward the origin of things two qualities are necessary in the explorer: a quick eye for possibilities and a steady head in testing them. Without the discernment to perceive relations no ascent to first principles is possible; and without the support of quantitative criterion, one is in danger of becoming giddy from one's own imagination. Congruities must first hint at a path; physical laws then determine its feasibility.

An eye for congruities is the first essential. For congruity alone accuses an underlying law. It is the analogic that with logic leads to great generalizations. Certain concords of the sort in the motions of the planets