700 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
of the application of a more continuous attention than the 
other; that a Newton is able without fatigue to connect 
inference with inference in one long series towards a deter¬ 
minate end, while the man of inferior capacity is soon 
obliged to break or let fall the thread which he had begun to 
weave. This is, in fact, what Sir Isaac, with equal modesty 
and shrewdness, himself admitted. To one who compli¬ 
mented him on his genius he replied that, if he had made 
any discoveries, it was owing more to patient attention than 
to any other talent. 
There is little analogy between mathematics and play-acting, 
but the great Mrs. Siddons, in nearly the same language, 
attributed the superiority of her unrivalled talent to the more 
intense study which she bestowed upon her parts. 
Like Newton, Descartes arrogated nothing to the force of his 
intellect. What he had accomplished more than other men that 
he attributed to the superiority of his method, and Bacon, in 
like manner, eulogises method, in that it places all men 
with equal attention upon a level, and leaves little or nothing 
to the prerogatives of genius. Nay, genius itself has been 
analysed by the shrewdest observers into a higher capacity 
of attention. ‘ Genius/ says Helvetius, whom we have 
already quoted, ‘is nothing but a continued attention 5 [une 
attention suivie). ‘Genius/ says Buffon, ‘is only a pro¬ 
tracted patience* (tine longue patience). ‘ In the exact sciences, 
at least/ says Cuvier, ‘it is the patience of a sound intellect 
which truly constitutes genius/ And Chesterfield has also 
observed, ‘ that the power of applying an attention, steady 
and undissipated, to a single object, is the sure mark of a 
superior genius/ 
Mr. Edgworth, Mr. Smiles tells us in his charming book, 
‘ Self-lielp / “ entertained the opinion that many of the great 
differences of intellect which are found in men depend more 
upon the early cultivation of the habit of attention than upon 
any great disparity between the powers of one individual 
and another /* and we read elsewhere in the same work— 
that “ Dalton, the chemist, always repudiated the notion of 
being ‘ a genius/ attributing everything which he had ac¬ 
complished to simple industry and accumulation. 
“ John Hunter said of himself, ‘ My mind is like a bee-hive ; 
but full as it is of busy and apparent confusion, it is yet full of 
order and regularity and food collected with incessant in¬ 
dustry from the choicest stores of nature/ 
“ We have, indeed, but to glance at the biographies of 
great men to find that the most distinguished inventors, 
* ‘ Lectures on Metaphysics/ vol. i, p. 258. 
