"Every one who has seriously investigated a novel question, who has really interrogated Nature with a view to a distinct answer, will bear me out in saying that it requires intense and sustained effort of imagination. The relations of sequence among the phenomena must be seen; they are hidden; they can only be seen mentally; a thousand suggestions rise before the mind, but they are recognised as old suggestions, or as inadequate to reveal what is sought; the experiments by which the problem may be solved have to be imagined; and to imagine a good experiment is as difficult as to invent a good fable, for we must have distinctly present — clear mental vision — the known qualities and relations of all the objects, and must see what will be the effect of introducing some new qualifying agent. If any one thinks this is easy, let him try it: the trial will teach him a lesson respecting the methods of intellectual activity not without its use."
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Novelists from EnglandLiterary criticsPhilosophers from EnglandJournalists from EnglandBiographers from England
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George Henry Lewes
George Henry Lewes (April 18, 1817 – November 30, 1878) was an English philosopher, biographer, novelist, and literary and dramatic critic. He was also controversially long engaged in an open marriage with his legal wife and openly lived with George Eliot (a.k.a. Mary Anne Evans) in a romantic relationship.
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