212 MEMOIR OF DR. DALTON, AND 



very characteristic of him, but unfortunately he has gone on 

 a wrong assumption. 



He has evidently been a man of great quickness, at the 

 same time apparently of haste ; he has enunciated the most 

 beautiful truths, and left them untouched for worthless specu- 

 lations, which seemed to need more ingenuity, almost leaving 

 us to doubt how far he understood his own writings. We 

 must, however, give him the honour of understanding what he 

 wrote, smaller honour we can give no man. Still it is per- 

 fectly clear that if his theory were as fully developed in his 

 mind as we with our superior opportunity can now see to be 

 deducible from his words, men would have understood him, 

 and the process would have been continued, but neither 

 did he make any advance, nor did he teach others clearly, 

 although the young Berzelius was much excited to curiosity. 



It certainly is difficult to tell how discoveries grow, often 

 impossible to tell who is the discoverer ; but this we may con- 

 sider a fair rule, not always easily applied, it is to be confessed, 

 that he is a discoverer who sees distinctly the full bearing of 

 his discoveries ; when this does not happen there is a difficulty 

 in giving that man the place due to him. It is clear that 

 Richter, like some others already mentioned, had fundamental 

 principles which would have led him to the atomic theory ; 

 but he has evidently been led by foregone conclusions, and 

 the law of planetary distances has been floating in his mind 

 and misleading him, when seeking for the diiFerences in the 

 combining weights of bodies. 



The discovery of reciprocating proportion was a very im- 

 portant and memorable one, although the scientific world did 

 not recognise it, another among the many proofs that scientific 

 men are subject to the same bigotted attachment to the laws 

 they have learned, as that class of men hitherto most blamed 

 for bigotry, nor is there any bigotry more engrossing than 

 that which appears to the possessors to be upheld by experi- 

 mental proof. Who discovered this important fact, it is still 



