of the development of physics. On the one hand, new relations are continually being discovered between objects which seemed destined to remain for ever unconnected; scattered facts cease to be strangers to each other and tend to be marshalled into an imposing synthesis. The march of science is towards unity and simplicity.
On the other hand, new phenomena are continually being revealed; it will be long before they can be assigned their place—sometimes it may happen that to find them a place a corner of the edifice must be demolished. In the same way, we are continually perceiving details ever more varied in the phenomena we know, where our crude senses used to be unable to detect any lack of unity. What we thought to be simple becomes complex, and the march of science seems to be towards diversity and complication.
Here, then, are two opposing tendencies, each of which seems to triumph in turn. Which will win? If the first wins, science is possible; but nothing proves this à priori, and it may be that after unsuccessful efforts to bend Nature to our ideal of unity in spite of herself, we shall be submerged by the ever-rising flood of our new riches and compelled to renounce all idea of classification—to abandon our ideal, and to reduce science to the mere recording of innumerable recipes.
In fact, we can give this question no answer. All that we can do is to observe the science of to-day, and compare it with that of yesterday.
