_construct_ facts, instead of observing them, have succeeded too ill to
merit very serious attention.

Science does not proceed therefore either from pure experience or from
pure reason; whence does it really come? From the encounter of
experience and of reason. Man observes, and he ascertains that facts are
governed according to intelligent design. He creates mathematics, and
discovers that the phenomena of the heavens and the earth are ruled
according to the laws of the calculus. His thought meets in the facts
with traces of a thought similar to his own. If any one of you doubts
this, I once more appeal to the almanac. Science, then, has birth only
from a meeting of experience with reason; how is this meeting effected?
The whole question of the origin of science is here. This encounter is
not necessary; it does not result simply from perseverance in
observation. The encounter of mind and of facts constitutes a discovery.
The thought which has governed nature may remain long veiled from our
mind. All at once perhaps the veil is lifted, and the thought of man
meets and recognizes itself in the phenomena which it is contemplating.
We encounter in this case the exercise of a special faculty, which is
neither the faculty of observing nor the faculty of reasoning, but the
faculty of discovering. When a man possesses it to a certain degree, we
call him a man of genius. Genius, or the faculty of discovering, is the
generating principle of science. Still, strange to say, this principle
is scarcely pointed out by a great number of logicians. They develop at
length the rules of observation and the rules of reasoning; and it seems
that, in their idea, the conjunction of reason and experience is
effected all alone and of necessity. I taught logic myself in this way
for twenty years, until one day, thinking better upon the subject, I was
obliged to say to myself (forgive me this rather trivial quotation):