814 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLI. No. 1066 



— ^you are surprised how easy are tlie steps. 

 Some one asked Lord Kelvin why no one be- 

 fore Edison had invented so simple a thing as 

 the feeder system. " The only reason I can 

 think of," he said, " is that no one else was Edi- 

 son." As to the range of his activities, he has 

 been associated in some way with so many of the 

 great modem developments that people some- 

 times speak as if he had invented everything, 

 even electricity itself, or if they do not go to 

 this length, they find it necessary to explain 

 why he did not invent this or that. The fact 

 that his name is not intimately associated with 

 one of the great modem achievements — the 

 development of the aeroplane — has called forth 

 numerous ingenious explanations. One of these 

 is that it is due to discouragement resulting 

 from his experience as a boy with an experi- 

 ment that has often been described. It is 

 said that he induced another boy to swallow 

 large quantities of Seidlitz powders and en- 

 couraged him to believe that sufficient gases 

 would be generated to enable him to fly. 

 Whether this be history or fable I know not, 

 but, seeing that he has done so much, we need 

 not spend much time in wondering why he has 

 not done more. Nor need we attempt the im- 

 possible in the effort to measure the debt that 

 mankind owes to him. Such statements as 

 have been made to the effect that his inven- 

 tions have given rise to industries that employ 

 nearly a million of men and thousands of 

 millions of capital really give no adequate 

 sense of the value of his achievements, al- 

 though they may be of some use as a very rough 

 indication of the scale of his activities. 



Not only has he shown his faith in science 

 by great achievements, but he has proved him- 

 self a great force in education by giving so 

 brilliant an exhibition of the method of sci- 

 ence, the method of experimentation. When 

 "we get to the root of the matter we see that 

 nearly all great advances are made by im- 

 provements in method. There is no evidence 

 that men are abler in the twentieth century 

 than they were in the Middle Ages, but they 

 have learned a new method. " It was in Bos- 

 ton," said Edison, "that I bought Faraday's 

 works, and appreciated that he was the master 



experimenter." It is interesting to think what 

 Edison's appreciation of this fact has meant 

 for the world. His popularity and the place 

 that he holds in the public esteem have forced 

 newspaper men to write so much about him 

 that they have often had to rely upon imagina- 

 tion. It is not surprising, therefore, that 

 there are many current myths regarding Mr. 

 Edison. The popular desire for dramatic con- 

 trast suggests that to reach the heights of 

 prosperity and public esteem that he has occu- 

 pied for long, he must have risen from the 

 depths of poverty and neglect. This is a pure 

 myth, harmless, perhaps, and possibly useful 

 as a spur to ambitious youth. A less innocu- 

 ous myth is the one that sets him up as a 

 " practical man " in the narrow sense. It is 

 true that he has described himself as " pure 

 practise" in distinction from Mr. Steinmetz 

 whom he has called " pure theory," but this, of 

 course, was a joke. Newspaper men have ex- 

 panded it so as to make it appear that Edison 

 knows nothing about science, cares nothing 

 for the achievements of the great experimenters 

 and thinkers who have preceded him, and 

 merely tries everything that he can think of 

 until he happens upon what he is seeking. 

 Few things more absurd could be suggested. 

 He is no slave to theory; he is ready, as every 

 scientific man is ready, to try anything that 

 seems reasonable, but practically always he 

 has what seems to him a good reason for every- 

 thing that he tries. In the rare cases where 

 he has tried blindly, it has been because there 

 was absolutely no light. 



Just one more observation and I am done. 

 His other great contribution to the progress of 

 education has been his constant insistence on 

 the gospel of work. Genius was long ago de- 

 scribed as " an infinite capacity for taking 

 pains." We all feel this to be inadequate, and 

 Edison has put the underlying thought more 

 accurately and more picturesquely by his aphor- 

 ism that " genius is one per cent, inspiration 

 and ninety-nine per cent, perspiration." Con- 

 trary to the general notion, very few of his in- 

 ventions have been the result of sudden in- 

 spiration. Practically all have been evolved 

 by slow and gradual processes. His day is 



