62 A CHEMICAL TRIAD. 



cordant and chaotic. Perhaps he did well to close his senses 

 against the outer confusion. The composer t>f music, living 

 in a city where discordant sounds prevail, does well to seclude 

 himself, and trust his own perceptions. But he would be 

 a foolish composer who, living in a grove, amidst the warbling 

 of birds, should close his senses to their influence. Dalton 

 was an honest, bold, and self-reliant man. Whatever he at- 

 tempted, he preferred to do alone. To be honourably inde- 

 pendent was the maxim of his life its spring, its motive 

 force. This is an honourable sentiment: few men have it 

 in excess. But even a sentiment, good intrinsically, may be 

 unduly developed. Perfection of human character is the 

 result of a balance established between faculties, not of the 

 expansion of one. Dalton's negligence, his contempt almost 

 of the labours of others, made him perhaps a greater genius, 

 but a lesser man. His self-reliance partook of the nature of 

 pride; and pride, like other faults, prepares a scourge for 

 itself. Dalton's small reading was the cause of his sometimes 

 appearing in the character of a plagiarist, though quite un- 

 wittingly. He accomplished some discoveries which had been 

 discovered before things great and wonderful, considered as 

 the fruits of mental exercise, but of a bygone age. 



The doctrine of atoms which he had given to chemists was 

 an agent of tremendous power an engine wherewith the 

 rocks of crude knowledge could be moved and shattered, and 

 their gems of truth laid bare. These rocks of knowledge had 

 already been chronicled in books, as rocks and quicksands are 

 depicted on geographic charts. Dalton, like a traveller rich 

 in instruments, but ignorant of geography, knew not where 

 to find them. Other travellers borrowed his tools, shattered 

 the rocks, and unmined the gems. To develop and unravel 

 the laws of atoms was to realise the brightest philosophic day- 

 dream of modern times a great and memorable work. The 

 later efforts of Dalton were less happy. He failed chiefly 

 because he knew not what others had done ; thereby furnish- 



