that of a plodder. The difference is that the genius sees more meanings than others, and he sees them more quickly. Suggestions are fertile with him; but one prerequisite of mental fertility is well-ordered, adequate knowledge. The need of abundant knowledge is evident because it is the source of meanings by which the world's confusion may be interpreted. But this knowledge must be organized so that its variety may not prevent concentration of available portions upon a definite problem. Unorganized knowledge is only wayward information, unfitted for application because incapable of being combined into a single impulse leading toward a definite conclusion. A man cannot be wise on nothing, and no amount of information need make him wise. Malthus' Essay on Population would have left Darwin and Wallace floating on the surface of conventional biological beliefs had they not been loaded with intellectual high explosives. Yet men of genius are more conservative than is sometimes thought. All of their ideas do not flower. They pull up many and throw them away. Kepler is a striking illustration of the mistake in assuming that genius has an unerring method of divining truth. His contributions to our knowledge of the orbits and motions of planetary masses are so fundamental that one might easily think him the possessor of a special method or "faculty" of discovering truth. But he had many "strange views" and fell into numerous errors. All of his ability would have availed him nothing had he not constantly maintained the attitude of the trier, the tester, the experimenter. He failed repeatedly and his hypotheses were often dreams of a wayward moment, but he was relentless in his experimental criticism of them. Experience with him meant experimenting, as it always must if it is to contribute conclusions of value. Who would be willing to assert that Kepler's "chimerical notions" were not, after all, stages in his progress toward truth? "In all probability the errors of the great mind," says Jevons, "exceed in number those of the less vigorous one. Fertility of imagination and abundance of guesses at truth are among the first requisites of discovery; but the erroneous guesses must be many times as numerous as those which prove well founded. . . The truest theories involve suppositions which are inconceivable, and no limit can really be placed to the freedom of hypothesis."1 Faraday, again, in a paper on ray-vibrations says: "I think it likely that I have made many mistakes in the preceding pages, for even to myself my ideas appear only as the shadow of a speculation, or as one of those impressions on the mind which are allowable for a time as guides to thought and research."2 "The world little knows," continues Faraday, elsewhere, in the same vein, "how many of the thoughts and theories which have passed through the mind of a scientific investigator have been crushed in silence and secrecy by his own severe criticism and adverse examination; that in the most successful instances not a tenth of the suggestions, the hopes, the wishes, the preliminary conclusions, have been realized." And it is the same with those working in the more practical field of invention. Edison, for example, once remarked that he could say without exaggeration that he had constructed three thousand different theories with regard to the electric light, "each of them reasonable and apparently likely to be true." Yet only in two cases did his experiments prove the truth of his theory.3 Theories do not reveal their own truth or falsity. The meaning of the facts from which they follow must be understood, and here the critical discrimination and sagacity of the experimenter is tested. Horace G. Hutchinson gives an amusing illustration of the view commonly held that "facts" carry their own light, which illumines them so brightly that their significance is apparent to all. 1 The Principles of Science, by W. Stanley Jevons, p. 577. "Shortly after the publication of the Origin of Species, Mr. Lowe" [the Chancellor of the Exchequer] "and Mr. Busk" [President of the College of Surgeons] "were at High Elms" [visiting Sir John Lubbock]. "On Saturday evening Mrs. Lowe was between young Lubbock and Mr. Busk, and the conversation turned on the great book. Mrs. Lowe asked Mr. Busk 'just to explain' why one germ should develop into a man and another into a kangaroo. He suggested that she should read the book, and so she took it up-stairs. Next day she sat in the drawing-room with it, and finished it about 4.30, shutting it up with a clap and saying: 'Well, I don't see much in your Mr. Darwin after all; if I had had his facts I should have come to the same conclusion myself.""1 Since the method by which geniuses solve their problems is the same as that used by the ordinary man in meeting the difficulties of his business or profession, it is worth while to examine the process briefly. First of all, it should be observed that if everything ran smoothly there would be no thinking. Like everything else, thinking requires a cause, which in this instance is trouble. Doubt, perplexity, uncertainty, an obstacle in the way of what we want to do all are different names for troubles of one sort or another that interfere with our activities, physical or mental. So long as an automobile is in perfect running order the driver is not concerned with its mechanism. But let it go dead, with seventy-five miles to dinner and the nearest garage, and he is keenly interested in the cause of the trouble. The recognition of trouble, however, either in something that we are trying to do or in finding the explanation of a problem is only the incentive to thinking. The cause of the difficulty must be understood before a remedy or a solution can be found, and here we have the second factor in thinking. In certain respects this is the most difficult part of the reasoning process, because most events are 1 Life of Sir John Lubbock, by Horace G. Hutchinson, vol. I., pp. 50–51. exceedingly complex, and the associated incidental factors are so intertwined with the essential elements that it is not easy to separate the essential from the accidental. Science has a way of meeting this perplexity. Experiments are arranged in which one possible cause after another is eliminated, and others, perhaps, exaggerated. In this way, by the process of elimination, the cause of a phenomenon is ascertained. stances. Certain peculiarities of electricity, for example, must have been observed in ancient times, in lightning, in the aurora borealis, in loadstone, and in certain other subIn some of these cases the activity was too intense and rapid. In others it was too feeble and obscure. Machines and experiments were needed to produce a continuous supply of electricity of such an intensity as would make it possible to see and test what actually happened. From early times, also, it has been noticed that the tides vary with the phases of the moon. Some connection between these phenomena was assumed, but there was no accurate knowledge of the relation until Newton announced the law of gravitation. Mere observation is likely to be misleading. It would never have shown, for example, that air may exist as a liquid and as a solid. In many matters, however, as in business and social problems, experimentation is not easy, and frequently it is impossible. Yet these questions are no less complex and involved than the scientific problems to which we have referred. In the former as well as in the latter the difficulty or obstruction in the way of successful progress in thought and action must be located and defined. The ledger does not show the profits which the business conditions lead one to expect. What is the explanation? Is the cause to be found in the internal organization, or lack of organization, or should it be sought among the salesmen? The cause and remedy of political corruption, to cite another instance, has long been a matter of contro versy. The ramifications of this disease of the body politic are so extensive that many other social disturbances spring from it. As this is being written there are indications that we are soon to try a tremendously big experiment-the elimination of the saloons. Whatever one's ideas may be regarding "personal liberty" and "legislating men good," it must be admitted that this is the scientific method of locating the cause of the trouble. This experiment of dispensing with saloons illustrates what is usually called the third step in reasoning-suggestions for remedying the difficulty. As a matter of fact, this is not the usual order of the factors in the process of thinking. Suggestions commonly arise before the difficulty is defined. The wise man, however, suspends judgment, delays acting on suggestions, until the cause of the trouble has been located. Unfortunately, however, wise men are rare, and consequently suggestions are acted upon hastily and impulsively before the difficulty has been carefully diagnosed and the cause located. It is the trial-and-error method on the animal level—the hit-or-miss method. Yet it is not the way of men who have realized on their ability. Napoleon, for example, once said: "If I appear to be always ready to reply to everything, it is because, before undertaking anything, I have meditated for a long time I have foreseen what might happen. It is not a spirit which suddenly reveals to me what I have to say or do in a circumstance unexpected by others-it is reflection, meditation." Evidently Napoleon measures up well to the type of which H. G. Wells was thinking when he made Mr. Britling say: "Will there ever be a man whose thoughts are quick and his acts slow?" One of the most charming illustrations of suspended judgment and sensitiveness to suggestion-ability to discover meaning in commonplace events-is the means by which James Bradley explained the apparent movements 1 1 Napoleon at Work, by Colonel Vachée, translated by G. F. Lees, p. 7. |