and succinct indications of Young the best starting-point for further effort.
It seems, however, hard to accept entirely the distinction suggested (p. 213) between the methods of cultivating theoretical physics in the two countries. To mention only two transcendent names which stand at the very front of two of the greatest developments of physical science of the last century, Carnot and Fresnel, their procedure was certainly not on the lines thus described. Possibly it is not devoid of significance that each of them attained his first effective recognition from the British school.
It may, in fact, be maintained that the part played by mechanical and such-like theories—analogies if you will—is an essential one. The reader of this book will appreciate that the human mind has need of many instruments of comparison and discovery besides the unrelenting logic of the infinitesimal calculus. The dynamical basis which underlies the objects of our most frequent experience has now been systematised into a great calculus of exact thought, and traces of new real relationships may come out more vividly when considered in terms of our familiar acquaintance with dynamical systems than when formulated under the paler shadow of more analytical abstractions.
