ATTENTION IS ESSENTIAL TO SUCCESS IN RESEARCH. 24:7 



a determinate end ; while the man of inferior capability is 

 soon obliged to break or let fall the thread which he had 

 begun to spin. This is, in fact, what Sir Isaac Newton, 

 with equal modesty and shrewdness, himself admitted. 

 To one who complimented him on his genius, he replied, 

 6 that if he had made any discoveries, it was owing more 

 to patient attention than to any other talent.' l 



Modesty of character is especially favourable to original 

 scientific research. The late Dr. T. Chalmers, in his ' Essay 

 on the Modesty of true Science,' says of Newton : ' He 

 wanted no other recommendation for any one article of 

 science, than the recommendation of evidence, and, with 

 this recommendation, he opened to it the chamber of his 

 mind, though authority scowled upon it, and taste was dis- 

 gusted by it, and fashion was ashamed of it, and all the 

 beauteous speculation of former days was cruelly broken 

 up by this announcement of the better philosophy, and 

 scattered like the fragments of an aerial vision, over which 

 the past generations of the world had been slumbering 

 their profound and pleasing reverie. But, on the other 

 hand, should the article of science want' the recommenda- 

 tion of evidence, he shut against it all the avenues of his 

 understanding, and though all antiquity lent their suffrages 

 to it, and all eloquence had thrown around it the most 

 attractive brilliancy, and all habit had incorporated it with 

 every system of every seminary of Europe, and all fancy 

 had arrayed it in the graces of the most tempting solicita- 

 tion, yet was the steady and inflexible mind of Newton 

 proof against this whole weight of authority and allure- 

 ment, and casting his cold and unwelcome look at the 

 specious plausibility, he rebuked it from his presence.' 



Another personal condition of great importance in 



1 Sir W. Hamilton, Lectures on Metaphysics. 



