277 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Generation 

 Genius 



hear them, as it were, all at once (gleich 

 alles zusammen). What a delight this is I 

 cannot tell! All this inventing, this pon- 

 dering, takes place in a pleasing lively 

 dream. Still the actual hearing of the tout 

 ensemble is after all the best. What has 

 been thus produced I do not easily forget, 

 and this is perhaps the best gift I have my 

 Divine Maker to thank for. 



" When I proceed to write down my ideas 

 I take out of the bag of my memory, if I 

 may use that phrase, what has previously 

 been collected into it in the way I have men- 

 tioned. For this reason, the committing to 

 paper is done easily enough; for everything 

 is, as I said before, already finished; and it 

 rarely differs on paper from what it was in 

 my imagination." HOLMES Life of Mozart, 

 quoted by CARPENTER in Mental Physiology, 

 ch. 6, p. 272. (A., 1900.) 



1349. GENIUS OF DISCOVERY Aris- 

 totle's Absurd Physics and Immortal Logic. 

 The genius of discovery depends alto- 

 gether on the number of these random no- 

 tions and guesses which visit the investi- 

 gator's mind. To be fertile in hypotheses 

 is the first requisite, and to be willing to 

 throw them away the moment experience 

 contradicts them is the next. . . . The 

 important thing to notice is that the good 

 flashes and the bad flashes, the triumphant 

 hypotheses and the absurd conceits, are on 

 an exact equality in respect of their origin. 

 Aristotle's absurd physics and his immortal 

 logic flow from one source: the forces that 

 produce the one produce the other. JAMES 

 Essays in Popular Philosophy, p. 249. (L. 

 G. & Co., 1899.) 



1350. GENIUS OF PRIMITIVE ME- 

 CHANICS Wonderful Results with Meager Re- 

 sources. The first of them [mechanics] had 

 a poorly furnished workshop. " His body," 

 as Emerson says, " was a whole chest of 

 tools." But he had not the knack of using 

 them. He was naked and houseless. His 

 needs, out of which all arts in all ages 

 spring, were few. His mission was to sub- 

 due the earth and to redeem it. Compared 

 with his progeny of our day, he would seem 

 an object of pity. But his brain was super- 

 abundant. His soul was full of capacities. 

 He was the father of us all. MASON Aborig- 

 inal American Mechanics in Memoirs of Int. 

 Congress of Anthropology, p. 69. ( Sch. P. C. ) 



1351. GENIUS QUENCHED Crushing 

 Power of Hostile Criticism Great Discov- 

 erer Ridiculed. It is quite true, as Helm- 

 holtz says, that Young was in advance of 

 his age ; but something is to be added which 

 illustrates the responsibility of our public 

 writers. For twenty years this man of 

 genius was quenched hidden from the ap- 

 preciative intellect of his countrymen 

 deemed in fact a dreamer, through the vig- 

 orous sarcasm of a writer who had then 

 possession of the public ear, and who in the 

 Edinburgh Review poured ridicule upon 

 Young and his speculations. To the cele- 



brated Frenchmen Fresnel and Arago he 

 was first indebted for the restitution of his 

 rights; for they, especially Fresnel, remade 

 independently, as Helmholtz says, and 

 vastly extended his discoveries. To the 

 students of his works Young has long since 

 appeared in his true light, but these twenty 

 blank years pushed him from the public 

 mind, which became in turn filled with the 

 fame of Young's colleague at the Royal In- 

 stitution, Davy, and afterwards with the 

 fame of Faraday. Carlyle refers to a re- 

 mark of Novalis, that a man's self-trust is 

 enormously increased the moment he finds 

 that others believe in him. If the opposite 

 remark be true if it be a fact that public 

 disbelief weakens a man's force there is 

 no calculating the amount of damage these 

 twenty years of neglect may have done to 

 Young's productiveness as an investigator. 

 It remains to be stated that his assailant 

 was Mr. Henry Brougham, afterwards Lord 

 Chancellor of England. TYNDALL Lectures 

 on Light, lect. 2, p. 51. (A., 1898.) 



1352. GENIUS SEES ABSTRACT 

 TRUTH Phenomena Moved by an Unseen 

 Something behind Them. The human mind, 

 in the exercise of its own faculties and 

 powers, sometimes by careful reasoning, 

 sometimes by the intuitions of genius uncon- 

 scious of any process, is able, from time to 

 time, to reach now one, now another, of 

 those purely intellectual conceptions which 

 are the basis of all that is intelligible to us 

 in the order of the material world. We look 

 for an ideal order or simplicity in material 

 law; and the very possibility of exact sci- 

 ence depends upon the fact that such ideal 

 order does actually prevail, and is related 

 to the abstract conceptions of our own in- 

 tellectual nature. It is in this way that 

 many of the greatest discoveries of science 

 have been made. Especially have the great 

 pioneers in new paths of discovery been led 

 to the opening of those paths by that fine 

 sense for abstract truths which is the no- 

 blest gift of genius. Copernicus, Kepler, and 

 Galileo were all guided in their profound 

 interpretations of visible phenomena by 

 those intuitions w r hich arise in minds finely 

 organized, brought into close relations with 

 the mind of nature, and highly trained in 

 the exercise of speculative thought. They 

 guessed the truth before they proved it to 

 be true; and those guesses had their origin 

 in abstract ideas of the mind, which turned 

 out to be ideas really embodied in the order 

 of the universe. So constantly has this re- 

 curred in the history of science that, as Dr. 

 Whewell [" History of the Inductive Sci- 

 ences," 2d edition, vol. i, p. 434] says, it is 

 not to be considered as an exception, but as 

 the rule. ARGYLL Reign of Law, ch. 2, p. 

 66. (Burt.) 



1353. GENIUS UNFAVORABLE TO 

 VOLUNTARY ATTENTION Holding Atten- 

 tion upon One Subject Gives Mastery. It is 

 probable that genius tends actually to pre- 



