180 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE 



he was weak-minded. One day they mentioned the matter 

 to their physician, a well-informed man, and expressed 

 their pity and sympathy for the poor old gentleman. They 

 were much astonished when they were told that the sup- 

 posed imbecile was none other than the great philosopher 

 Sir Isaac Newton, who was then deeply engaged in the 

 study of certain abstract problems in regard to light and 

 was using the soap bubbles to verify practically his purely 

 mathematical deductions. This particular story may not 

 be true (very few such stories are), but it has an air of 

 probability about it and there have been hundreds of actual 

 cases just like it. 



Very few great discoveries or inventions were ever made 

 by mere accident and when such has apparently been the 

 case, the mind that was able to seize the new idea and adapt 

 it to the required conditions must have been prepared to 

 recognize its significance and the relation which it bore 

 to these conditions. The discovery of phosphorus seems 

 to have been made by accident; the discoverer, Brandt, 

 was looking for something entirely different. He thought 

 that in certain liquids derived from the human organism 

 he ought to find the philosopher's stone ; he did not find the 

 stone, but he did find phosphorus. But it is very certain 

 that he would not have obtained the phosphorus if he had 

 not been prepared to do so by long experience in earnest 

 chemical work. 



A few years ago an article on this subject went the rounds 

 of the press and in it we were told that among other acci- 

 dental discoveries "the attraction of gravitation was sug- 

 gested to Sir Isaac Newton by the fall of an apple; that 

 Galileo got his first hint of the pendulum from the swinging 

 of a chandelier in a cathedral; that Madame Galvani, being 



