Page:Reflections on the decline of science in England - Babbage - 1830.pdf/234

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CONCLUSION.

to require a mass of fluid to render it visible, previous evaporation, quickly performed on slips of window glass, rendered the solution more concentrated.

The true value of this minute chemistry arises from its cheapness and the extreme rapidity with which it can be accomplished: it may, in hands like those of Wollaston, be used for discovery, but not for measure. I have thought it more necessary to place this subject on what I consider its true grounds, for two reasons. In the first place, I feel that injustice has been done to a distinguished philosopher in attributing to some of his bodily senses that excellence which I think is proved to have depended on the admirable training of his intellectual faculties. And, in the next place, if I have established the fact, whilst it affords us better means of judging of such observations as lay claim to an accuracy "more than human," it also opens, to the patient inquirer into truth, a path by which he may acquire powers that he would otherwise have thought were only the gift of nature to a favoured few.