relations, was a riddle which Goethe in vain attempted to solve,
nor were we physicists and physiologists more successful. I
include myself in the number, for I long toiled at the task
without getting any nearer my object, until I at last discovered
that a wonderfully simple solution had been discovered at the
beginning of this century, and had been in print ever since for
any one to read who chose. This solution was found and published
by the same Thomas Young, who first showed the right method of
arriving at the interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphics."

"He was one of the most acute men who ever lived, but had the
misfortune to be _too far in advance of his contemporaries_.
They looked on him with astonishment, but could not follow his
bold speculations, and thus a mass of his most important
thoughts remained buried and forgotten in the 'Transactions of
the Royal Society,' until a later generation by slow degrees
arrived at the re-discovery of his discoveries, and came to
appreciate the force of his argument and the accuracy of his
conclusions."

This half century of passive resistance to science, in the case of Dr.
Young and Dr. Gall, is nothing unusual. It was 286 years from the day
when Bruno, the eloquent philosopher, was burned at the stake by the
Catholic Church, before a statue was prepared to honor his memory in
Italy.

What was the reception of the illustrious surgeon, physiologist, and
physician, John Hunter? While he lived, "most of his contemporaries
looked upon him as little better than an enthusiast and an innovator,"
according to his biographer; and when, in 1859, it was decided to
inter his remains in Westminster Abbey, it was hard to find his body,
which was at last discovered in a vault along with 2000 others piled
upon it.

Harvey's discoveries were generally ignored during his life, and
Meibomius of Lubeck rejected his discovery in a book published after
Harvey's death.

When Newton's investigations of light and colors were first published,
"A host of enemies appeared (says Playfair), each eager to obtain the
unfortunate pre-eminence of being the first to attack conclusions
which the unanimous voice of posterity was to confirm." Some, like
Mariotte, professed to repeat his experiments, and succeeded in making
a failure, which was published; like certain professors who at
different times have undertaken to make unsucc