ABSTRACT
Mr. Hugh Fausset declared that the scientific approach to reality was one-sided, and that we scientists tried to reduce our minds to machines. Now of course there are one-sided scientists, just as there are one-sided painters and poets. But every scientific man or woman, at least in the experimental sciences, must combine three qualities: reason, imagination, and manual skill. And these must be welded together by an almost passionate acceptance of reality. Let us compare a great artist, Blake, and a great scientist, Faraday. Blake saw angels and devils where no one else could see them; he tried to fit them into an intellectual system; and he
drew them and wrote about them extremely weIl. Faraday, who was a man of original and flaming imagination, saw lines of force where everyone before him had seen empty space. He reasoned about their properties. He devised and made apparatus to test these properties. And nine times out of ten, so he teIls us, his imagination proved wrong. But his feeling for reality-his love of truth, if you likewas stronger than his imagination. He did not publish his imaginings unless they conformed to reality wherever he could test that conformity. & a result of Faraday's work you are able to listen to the wireless. But more than that, as a result of Faraday's work scientifically edueated men and wornen have an altogether rieher view of the world : for them, apparently empty space is full of the most intricate and beautiful patterns. So Faraday, just because he was a more complete man, as I think, than Blake, gave the world not only fresh wealth hut fresh beauty.
