The fact on which it
bases itself is no doubt true enough; but what is the utmost that it
proves? That more men than one should reach at the same time the same
discovery independently is precisely what we should be led to expect,
when we consider what the character of scientific discovery is. The
facts of nature which form its subject-matter are in themselves as
independent of the men who discover them as an Alpine peak is of the men
who attempt to climb it. They are, indeed, precisely analogous to such a
peak which all discoverers are attempting to scale at once; and the fact
that three men make at once the same discovery does no more to show that
it could have been made by the majority of their fellow-workers, and
that it was in reality made not by themselves but by their generation,
than the fact that three men of exceptional nerve and endurance meet at
last on some previously virgin summit proves the feat to have been
accomplished less by these men themselves than by the mass of tourists
who thronged the hotel below and whose climbing exploits were limited to
an ascent by the Rigi Railway.
Other writers, however, try to reach Mr.
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