Page:Studies of a Biographer 3.djvu/183

Cornewall Lewis, the very type of the thoroughly prosaic, solid, utilitarian mind; and not the less that he was himself imaginative and, if not a poet, had marked poetical sensibility. The explanation may be suggested by the doctrine which he applied in his most valuable works. A scientific inquirer must accumulate knowledge of facts, for the whole fabric of science is based upon experience. But he must also be always speculating, co-ordinating, and combining his experience; his mind must be incessantly suggesting the theories till he hits upon the one clue that leads through the chaotic labyrinth which experience presents to puzzle us. Bagehot denounced and ridiculed the theorists who asked for no base of experience and placidly assumed that the fact would conform to the theory. So long as such theories prevail, there can be no stability and therefore no progress. 'Stupidity' is invaluable just so far as it involves a tacit demand that theories should be checked by plain practical application. But stupidity absolute—sheer impenetrability to ideas—was so little to his taste that a main purpose of his writing is to consider how it can be effectually kept under. As a dumb instinctive force, it wants a guide, and he is terribly afraid that it will become refractory