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254 METHODS OF SOCIAL REFORM.
Thus, the longer the automaton went on playing games, the
more experienced it would become by the accumulation of
experimental results. Such a machine precisely represents
the eaqnirement of experience by our nervous organisation.
But Eraemas Darwin doubtless meant by experiment something
more than this unintentional heaping-up of experience.
The part of wisdom is to learn to forosee the results of om
actions, by making slight and harmless trials before we
commit ourselves to an irrevocable line of conduct. we
ought to feel our way, and try the ice before we venture on
it to a dangerous extent. To mako an experimont, in this more
special some, is to nrrange certain known conditions, or, in
other words, to put together certain causal agents, in order to
ascertain their outcome or aggregate of effects. The experiment
has knowledge alone for its immediate pnrpose; but he
ia truly happy, as the Latin poet said, who can discern the
muses of things, for, these being known, we can proceed et
onoe to aafe and profitable applications.
It need hardly be said that it is to frequent and carefullyplanned
appeals to experiment in the physical sciences, that
we owe almost the whole progress of the human rme in the
laat three centuries. Even moral and intellectual triumphs
may often be trmed back to dependence on physical inventions,
snd to the incentive which thoy give towards general activity.
Certainly, political and military mccesg is almost entirely
dependent on the experimental sciences. It is di0icnlt to
discover that, a8 regards courage, our soldiers in Afghanistan
and Zululand and the Transveal are any better than the men
whose countries they invade. But it is the science of the rifle,
the shell, and the mountain gun-science perfected by constant
experimentation-which gives the poor savage and even the
brave Boer no chenoe of ultimate EUCWSS in resistance. To
whom do we owe all this in its first beginning, but to the great
experimentalist, the friar, &ger Bacon, of Oxford, Our trueat
and greatest national glory, the smallest of whose merita
that he first mentions gunpowder; yet 60 little d m the
English xution yet appreciate the sources of its power and
IJwatness that the writings of Roger Bscon lie, to a great