HISTOEY OF THE ATOMIC THEORY. 243 



It is plain that Wollaston, who was behind in no theories, 

 was unable to obtain from the knowledge of the times an 

 explanation of these phenomena, even when he saw the 

 difficulty clearly ; and it is plain also, that although it was 

 said that he would have discovered it had Dalton failed, that 

 he did not discover it even when he had in his hands as 

 many facts as Dalton had, and a greater power of accurate 

 workmanship. The genius was wanting, the acuteness of 

 Wollaston and of Proust could not penetrate, where the sim- 

 plicity of Dalton was at home. 



In Sir Humphrey Davy's Bakerian lecture for 1809, in 

 giving some analyses, he says, " the same proportions would 

 follow from an application of Mr. Dalton's ingenious suppo- 

 sition," but even he, with a mind much more capable, as we 

 might suppose, of delighting in grand general laws, such as from 

 their brilliancy come upon us like the finest poetry, even then 

 saw little in the new theory, and said little upon it. When it 

 began to be established he was inclined to prove that Dalton 

 was not the first discoverer, although when he delivered his 

 discourse on giving Dalton the gold medal of the Royal Society 

 he had arrived at a clearer view of the subject. The same 

 slow vision was, as might be more readily conceived, the case 

 with Berzelius, who took it gradually up as it came from his 

 own analyses, growing during his whole life into more and 

 more absolute certainty. But Dalton had given a table of 

 atomic weights in 1803, and for years these philosophers 

 plodded after him with numberless proofs, Berzelius surpassing 

 all others in accumulating and arranging scientific wealth. 



It will not be pleasant to review the delinquencies of our 

 great men, nor the slowness of their conceptions, their desire 

 to limit the law, and to cramp it down to the bounds of their 

 own knowledge, denying its power to explain more than they 

 had seen. Scepticism has its work to do in the world, and 

 credulity has had many victims, but it may well be said that 

 the amount of knowledge to be gained is so great that our 



