UNKNOWN GENIUS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1384, 9 March 1912, Page 6

UNKNOWN GENIUS.

THE MAN WHO FIRST USED FIRE. DEFENCE OF THE INVENTOR. A vory spirited defeuco of tho inventor and investigator as against the soldier and the statesman was made by Mr. A. A. Campbell Swinton, as president of tho Konrgen Society. He said: "All advance in tho relations between man and Nature whereby man gains to any greater extent the mastery may bo described as scientific progress; and in this connection wo must recognise'that many things which wo now look upon, and havo for ages regarded as entirely commonplace, were, at the time of their inception, really very remarkable indeed. Take, for instance, tho application to human needs of fire. Animals, even of the highest types, make no use of it. There must havo been a period when man also did not understand its properties, and, like tho animals from which he has sprung, was afraid of it, and left it severely alone. A time must next havo come, and with that time the valoious man who first had the temerity to experiment with this very powerful and destructive agent. Think of .this prehistorio investigator into tho means and effects of combustion in that far distant age; consider his inferior mental equipment; imagine his savage surroundings; take into account, also, his lack of any but the most primitive appliances. Must we not land his enterprise and admire liis courage? Must we not also acknowledge the enormous advantages his investigations havo gained for all his posterity? Ihe warming of their bodies and the cooking of both animal and vegetable nutriment would, no doubt, be the first uses to which our remote ancestors would apply the new agent; but soon would follow the firing of pottery, up to that date merely sun-baked, then the reduction and smelting of metals, and finally the whole galaxy of tho arts. ' '...,.. "What is scientific progress if this is not? And yet it leaves off where what we usually mean by science begins, namely, about the Graeco-Roman period. Look out however, into London to-day, and recognise how little of all we see around us could havo ever.existed but for .those earlv high-temperature experiments made so niany thousands of years ago. Without them, could human beings even live in this northern climate? Here may I point out that, curiously enough, it is only, when we CO back to the earliest evidences of primitive human life upon this planet that we take the true philosophical course of naming the periods we are dealing with after the main material advances in scientific progress made during those periods by the human race. We talk of the.Stone

aft.- of the Bronze egt, of the. Iron age, to denote those vast expanses.of time during which the primitive inventor was discovering the means of applying new materials to what was then the great necessity of mankind, namely, weapons for the chase, for self-protection, and for war upon his enemies. . "Later in history-we find that this really philosophical method is abandoned. As we come to know more as regards tha position, supremacy, and conditions of particular races; and still further when we. become better acquainted with the deeds and achievements of particular individuals, we find that historians have a tendency to overlook the enormous influence of: the results obtained by scientific investigators and discoverers, and. to make it appear as though the current of events were really governed by those who, from accident of birth, official position, political influence, or martial achievements, have made for: themselves reputations as leaders of men. . . "To see that this view is wrong we have only to survey the past. Can it for an instant be doubted that the labours of tho unknown prehistoric individual to whom I have just alluded, who first discovered the prouertie9 of fire, or of those who originated the smelting of metals, who launched their frail, and at that time novel, coracles unon tho ocean, and first applied wheels to tho primitive cart, are more living factors today than tho valour of all the warriors, the wisdom of all the statesmen, -or the wiles of nil the -politicians that the world has seen? It is. a truism, indeed, that the world knows little of its greatest men. .Can it be questioned that tho discoveries of Archimedes.and his disciples have more effect to-day than tho battles of Alexander or of Hannibal?'Or, if we turn' to modern times, can it be gainsaid that Watt and Stophenson, Davy and Faraday, have done moro to change both the course of history and. tho material conditions ot lifo than did Napoleon or Wellington, Wnlpole or Pitt? For the undue amount of influence on the progress of the world thnt is attributed to leaders of men, in comparison with that exerted by investigators of nature, historians are 'no doubt to blame. "Since tho earliest times there has never beeu a better organised and moro successful mutual admiration society than that formed by tho writers of tho world, who have always been chiefly concerned to discuss one another and oneanother's scripts. This, and tho fact that tho written word endures, has given to tho wielders of tho pen a prominence in history to which they are scarcely entitled by their influence on progress. At Uie present time, when it is (ho fashion to ascribe tho production of all wealth to the manual labourer and all progress to the politician, it is moro than ever necessiry that correct views should be insisted on. Let us, therefore, emphasise the fact that from the beginning of the world all advance has been due. not to the many, but to a few exceptional individuals; and had it not been-for the genius of these we should still be naked savages, not even painted with the proverbial woad."-