484 Mr. Charles Tomlinson's Remarks 



The one is individual and proper to the man ; the other is 

 general and has no individuality. A work by Sbakspere re- 

 mains for all time untouched, unchanged (except to make the 

 text more correct, and thus augment the author's individuality) ; 

 a work by Davy may be taken up by Faraday, and Faraday's 

 work may be carried forward by his contemporaries or suc- 

 cessors. And this is probably what Lord Bacon meant when 

 he said that his inductive method of philosophizing tended 

 rather " to level wit and intellect." 



The interest that is felt in literary history, contrasted with 

 the comparative indifference to scientific history, rests on the 

 fact that a Chaucer, a Shakspere, a Dryden, a Gibbon is each 

 an intellect rounded, complete, fixed, and final. But, without 

 meaning the slightest disrespect to such great men as Newton, 

 Davy, and Faraday, it must be admitted that they are but 

 parts of a great whole, and that whole is Nature. We care 

 more about the laws of Nature than about their discoverers ; 

 but every one feels an interest in a great writer because he and 

 his works are inseparably connected. An unpublished poem 

 or letter by one of the great writers of the past would excite 

 the ardour of the literary world ; a new fact in the history 

 of oxygen or of the composition of water would fail to receive 

 more than a passing glance from scientific men. They 

 consider that all the main known facts are embodied in text- 

 books, while that which is not so embodied is of no con- 

 sequence. They consider that we have the names of the 

 discoverers and the dates of all important facts in the main 

 correct. They want to pursue discovery, not its history ; 

 and hence they feel but little interest in the light thrown by 

 old memoirs on the progress of the past. 



Sir John Herschel, writing a scientific treatise, refers to 

 Wells's Essay as " one of the most beautiful specimens of 

 inductive experimental inquiry," and earnestly recommends 

 it to the student " as a model with which he will do well to 

 become familiar." Dr. Whewell, writing scientific history, 

 is more cautious : he refers to Wells's Essay as a one of those 

 books which most drew attention to the true doctrine." 



Wells, in his essay, writes with an air of authority. His 

 tone is everywhere that of a man announcing his own disco- 

 veries. For example, he says : — " I have frequently seen, 

 during nights that were generally clear, a thermometer lying 

 on the grass-plat rise several degrees upon the zenith being 

 occupied only a few minutes by a cloud." Most of the im- 

 portant steps in the theory are thus stated as if for the first 

 time, and we find only a loose and general reference to autho- 

 rities, and a very scant acknowledgment of other men's 



