When the ideas, after entering through different gateways, effect a
junction in the citadel of the mind, the position they occupy becomes
impregnable. Opticians tell us that the mental combination of the
views of an object which we obtain from stations no further apart than
our two eyes is sufficient to produce in our minds an impression of
the solidity of the object seen; and we find that this impression is
produced even when we are aware that we are really looking at two flat
pictures placed in a stereoscope. It is therefore natural to expect
that the knowledge of physical science obtained by the combined use of
mathematical analysis and experimental research will be of a more
solid, available, and enduring kind than that possessed by the mere
mathematician or the mere experimenter.

But what will be the effect on the University, if men Pursuing that
course of reading which has produced so many distinguished Wranglers,
turn aside to work experiments? Will not their attendance at the
Laboratory count not merely as time withdrawn from their more
legitimate studies, but as the introduction of a disturbing element,
tainting their mathematical conceptions with material imagery, and
sapping their faith in the formulae of the textbook? Besides this, we
have already heard complaints of the undue extension of our studies,
and of the strain put upon our questionists by the weight of learning
which they try to carry with them into the Senate-House. If we now
ask them to get up their subjects not only by books and writing, but
at the same time by observation and manipulation, will they not break
down altogether? The Physical Laboratory, we are told, may perhaps be
useful to those who are going out in Natural Science, and who do
not take in Mathematics, but to attempt to combine both kinds of study
during the time of residence at the University is more than one mind
can bear.