This habit of recognising principles amid the endless variety of their
action can never degrade our sense of the sublimity of nature, or mar
our enjoyment of its beauty. On the contrary, it tends to rescue our
scientific ideas from that vague condition in which we too often leave
them, buried among the other products of a lazy credulity, and to
raise them into their proper position among the doctrines in which our
faith is so assured, that we are ready at all times to act on them.
Experiments of illustration may be of very different kinds. Some may
be adaptations of the commonest operations of ordinary life, others
may be carefully arranged exhibitions of some phenomenon which occurs
only under peculiar conditions. They all, however, agree in this,
that their aim is to present some phenomenon to the senses of the
student in such a way that he may associate with it the appropriate
scientific idea. When he has grasped this idea, the experiment which
illustrates it has served its purpose.
In an experiment of research, on the other hand, this is not the
principal aim.
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