SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 537 



He compares them to persons who merely stand on a loftier 

 height, and thence receive the sun's rays a little earlier, than 

 the rest of the human race. " The sun illuminates the hills 

 while it is still below the horizon, and truth is discovered by 

 the highest minds a little before it becomes manifest to the 

 multitude. This is the extent of their superiority. They are the 

 first to catch and reflect a light which, without their assistance, 

 must in a short time be visible to those who lie far beneath 

 them."* If this metaphor is to be carried out, it follows that 

 if there had been no Newton, the world would not only have 

 had the Newtonian system, but would have had it equally 

 soon; as the sun would have risen just as early to spectators 

 in the plain if there had been no mountain at hand to catch 

 still earlier rays. And so it would be, if truths, like the sun, 

 rose by their own proper motion, without human effort ; but 

 not otherwise. I believe that if Newton had not lived, the 

 world must have waited for the Newtonian philosophy until 

 there had been another Newton, or his equivalent. No ordinary 

 man, and no succession of ordinary men, could have achieved 

 it. I will not go the length of saying that what Newton did 

 in a single life, might not have been done in successive steps 

 by some of those who followed him, each singly inferior to him 

 in genius. But even the least of those steps required a man 

 of great intellectual superiority. Eminent men do not merely 

 see the coming light from the hill-top, they mount on the hill- 

 top and evoke it ; and if no one had ever ascended thither, 

 the light, in many cases, might never have risen upon the plain 

 at all. Philosophy and religion are abundantly amenable to 

 general causes ; yet few will doubt, that had there been no 

 Socrates, no Plato, and no Aristotle, there would have been no 

 philosophy for the next two thousand years, nor in all proba- 

 bility then ; and that if there had been no Christ, and no St. 

 Paul, there would have been no Christianity. 



The point in which, above all, the influence of remarkable 

 individuals is decisive, is in determining the celerity of the 

 movement. In most states of society it is the existence of 



* Essay on Dryden, in Miscellaneous Writings, i. 186. 



