Indbydelsesskrift til Kjøbenhavns Universitets Aarsfest til Erindring om Kirkens Reformation: Nogle Bemærkninger om Naturvidenskabernes Betydning for vor Tid

43 nation should be taught to present the subject investigated in all possible, and even in impossible views; to search for analogies of likeness and (if I may say so) of opposition — inverse or contrasted analogies; to present the fundamental idea in every form, proportion, and condition; to clothe it with suppositions and probabilities, — that all cases may pass in review, and be touched, if needful, by the Ithuriel spear of experiment. But all this must be under govern- ment, and the result must not be given to society until the judgment, educated by the process itself, has been exercised upon it. Let us construct our hypotheses for an hour, or a day, or for years; they are of the utmost value in the elimination of truth, „which is evolved more freely from error than from confusion“; but, above all things, let us not cease to be aware of the temptation they offer; or, because they gradually become familiar to us, accept them as estab- lished. We could not reason about electricity without thinking of it as a fluid, or a vibration, or some other existent state or form. We should give up half our advan- tage in the consideration of heat if we refused to consider it as a principle, or a state of motion. We could scarcely touch such subjects by experiment, and we should make no progress in their practical application without hypothesis; still it is absolutely necessary that we should learn to doubt the conditions we assume, and acknowledge we are uncer- tain, whether heat and electricity are vibrations or sub- stances, or either.“ XVII. I det foregaaende er nævnt et Par Tilfælde, i hvilke tilsyneladende klare og indlysende Grundsætninger kom til at staa som Hindringer for Fremskridtet. Da det har sin store Interesse, at en saadan Modsætning kan fremkomme, ville vi betragte denne Sag noget nærmere. Archimedes indleder sin Bog om Planens Ligevægt med følgende Grundsætning: „To lige tunge Legemer, som op-