The vast results obtained by science are won by no mystical faculties, by no

mental processes, other than those which are practised by every one of us in the

humblest and meanest affairs of life. A detective policeman discovers a burglar

from the marks made by his shoe, by a mental process identical with that by

which Cuvier restored the extinct animals of Montmartre from fragments of their

bones. Nor does that process of induction and deduction by which a lady, finding

a stain of a particular kind upon her dress, concludes that somebody has upset

the inkstand thereon, differ in any way from that by which Adams and Leverrier

discovered a new planet. The man of science, in fact, simply uses with

scrupulous exactness the methods which we all habitually, and at every moment,

use carelessly.

 

--THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY, _Lay Sermons_.

 

Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old with

all the characters of age? Have you not a moist eye? a dry hand? a yellow cheek?

a white beard? a decreasing leg? an increasing belly? is not your voice broken?

your wind short? your chin double? your wit single? and every part about you

blasted with antiquity? and will you yet call yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir

John!

 

--SHAKESPEARE, _The Merry Wives of Windsor_.

 

Finally, in preparing expository material ask yourself these questions regarding