270 MEMOIR OF DR. DALTON, AND 



taneous oflferings, prompted by a warm and generous approba- 

 tion of his philosophical labours, and by the desire to cheer 

 him onward in the same prosperous career. Deeply as he 

 has felt these distinctions, they have never carried him beyond 

 that sober and well regulated love of reputation, which exists 

 in the purest minds, and is one of the noblest principles of 

 action. 



" In perfect consistency with Mr. Dalton's intellectual quali- 

 ties are the moral features of his character, the disinterested- 

 ness, the independence, the truthfulness, and the integrity 

 which through life have uniformly marked his conduct towards 

 others. He has been taxed with plagiarism, but never was a 

 charge more completely unfounded. Not only is he incapable 

 of encroaching on the just rights of others, but even of taking 

 tacitly to himself applause to which he does not feel that he 

 is fully entitled. Of the work from which he is accused of 

 having borrowed the outline of his atomic theory he had never 

 once heard, until many years after the publication of his 

 opinion on that subject. Nor is this at all extraordinary when 

 it is considered that men like Mr. Dalton, of original and 

 creative minds, trust rather to their own powers of research 

 than to reading ; and in the know^ledge of the history of science 

 are often surpassed by very inferior persons. This general re- 

 mark applies to Mr. Dalton ; but he is a discoverer in the true 

 sense of the word. He has drawn from observed phenomena 

 new and original views — upon these views he has founded dis- 

 tinct conceptions of a general law of nature ; — he has traced 

 out the conformity of that law with an extensive class of facts, 

 many of which he himself first revealed by well-devised 

 experiments, and he has thus secured an admiration not by 

 having broached ingenious opinions merely, but by having 

 worked out the evidences of those opinions by labours most 

 sagaciously and perseveringly applied. Nor is it on the 

 atomic theory only that his reputation must rest. It has a 

 broader basis in his beautiful and successful investigations 



