They illustrate the fact that before any
great scientific principle receives distinct enunciation by
individuals, it dwells more or less clearly in the general
scientific mind. The intellectual plateau is already high, and our
discoverers are those who, like peaks above the plateau, rise a
little above the general level of thought at the time.
But many years prior even to the foregoing utterance of Faraday,
a similar argument had been employed. I quote here with equal
pleasure and admiration the following passage written by Dr. Roget
so far back as 1829. Speaking of the contact theory, he says:--
'If there could exist a power having the property ascribed to it by
the hypothesis, namely, that of giving continual impulse to a fluid
in one constant direction, without being exhausted by its own
action, it would differ essentially from all the known powers in
nature. All the powers and sources of motion with the operation of
which we are acquainted, when producing these peculiar effects, are
expended in the same proportion as those effects are produced; and
hence arises the impossibility of obtaining by their agency a
perpetual effect; or in other words a perpetual motion. But the
electro-motive force, ascribed by Volta to the metals, when in
contact, is a force which, as long as a free course is allowed to
the electricity it sets in motion, is never expended, and continues
to be excited with undiminished power in the production of a
never-ceasing effect.
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