Note 59 — Chapter VIII · PLATONIC COMPOSITIONS GENERALLY.

That the only road to trustworthy affirmation lies through a string of negations, unfolded and appreciated by systematic procedure, is strongly insisted on by Bacon, Novum Organum, ii. 15, “Omnino Deo (formarum inditori et opifici), aut fortasse angelis et intelligentiis competit formas per affirmationem immediate nosse, atque ab initio contemplationis. Sed certe supra hominem est: cui tantum conceditur, procedere primo per negativas, et postremo loco desinere in affirmativas, post omnimodam exclusionem.” Compare another Aphorism, i. 46.

The following passage, transcribed from the Lectures of a distinguished physical philosopher of the present day, is conceived in the spirit of the Platonic Dialogues of Search, though Plato would have been astonished at such patient multiplication of experiments:—

“I should hardly sustain your interest in stating the difficulties which at first beset the investigation conducted with this apparatus, or the numberless precautions which the exact balancing of the two powerful sources of heat, here resorted to, rendered necessary. I believe the experiments, made with atmospheric air alone, might be numbered by tens of thousands. Sometimes for a week, or even for a fortnight, coincident and satisfactory results would be obtained: the strict conditions of accurate experimenting would appear to be found, when an additional day’s experience would destroy this hope and necessitate a recommencement, under changed conditions, of the whole inquiry. It is this which daunts the experimenter. It is this preliminary fight with the entanglements of a subject so dark, so doubtful, so uncheering, without any knowledge whether the conflict is to lead to anything worth possessing, that renders discovery difficult and rare. But the experimenter, and particularly the young experimenter, ought to know that as regards his own moral manhood, he cannot but win, if he only contend aright. Even, with a negative result, his consciousness that he has gone fairly to the bottom of his subject, as far as his means allowed — the feeling that he has not shunned labour, though that labour may have resulted in laying bare the nakedness of his case — re-acts upon his own mind, and gives it firmness for future work.” (Tyndall, Lectures on Heat, considered as a Mode of Motion, Lect x. p. 332.)