SCIENCE IN GERMANY 



an investigation is, that we see that the great thinker 

 came at an opportune time. There are times in the 

 history of science when there is a kind of quietism. 

 Many busy workers are engaged in the accumulation 

 of facts, but there are no startling discoveries nor broad 

 generalisations that seem to put things in a new light. 

 Such periods are unfavourable to the production of 

 great men. Yet, even during such times, there may 

 be undercurrents of thought making for great ques- 

 tions. Here and there a solitary thinker may be 

 brooding over great problems, and, although his 

 thoughts may be dark, he is almost unconsciously pre- 

 paring the way for the full revelation of the truth to 

 the man of genius. Thus it is that to only a very 

 few is vouchsafed the honour of making an entirely 

 new discovery. This is an occurrence of the rarest 

 kind. The rule is that limited observations of the 

 truth are made here and there by men who are soon 

 forgotten (except by the historian of science), vague 

 and nebulous speculations, as it were, float in the air, 

 and at last an epoch arrives, and with it the man. 

 The epoch ushers in new ideas, new modes of looking 

 at things, new generalisations of far-reaching char- 

 acter affect the views of scientific thinkers, and with 

 this new period we usually associate the name of one 

 man, such as Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Linnaeus, 

 Darwin. Great, individually, as such men were, in 

 estimating their work we must remember that they 

 were not only highly endowed, but that they were 



