wer statues to men than to children, animals, and especially
_fortune_." In this wise expressed himself one of the sage thinkers of
the eighteenth century, Turgot. The importance of the last factor has
been much exaggerated. Chance may be taken in two senses--one general,
the other narrow.

(1) In its broad meaning, chance depends on entirely internal, purely
psychic circumstances. We know that one of the best conditions for
inventing is abundance of material, accumulated experience,
knowledge--which augment the chances of original association of ideas.
It has even been possible to maintain that the nature of memory implies
the capacity of creating in a special direction. The revelations of
inventors or of their biographers leave no doubt as to the necessity of
a large number of sketches, trials, preliminary drawings, no matter
whether it is a matter of industry, commerce, a machine, a poem, an
opera, a picture, a building, a plan of campaign, etc. "Genius for
discovery," says Jevons, depends on the number of notions and chance
thoughts coming to the inventor's mind. To be fertile in
hypotheses--that is the first requirement for finding something new. The
inventor's brain must be full of forms, of melodies, of mechanical
agents, of commercial combinations, of figures, etc., according to the
nature of his work. "But it is very rare that the ideas we find are
exactly those we were seeking. In order to find, _we must think along
other lines_."[77] Nothing is more true.

So much for chance within: it is indisputable, whatever may have been
said of it, but it depends finally on individuality--from it arises the
non-anticipated synthesis of ideas. The abundance of memory-ideas, we
know, is not a sufficient condition for creation; it is not even a
necessary condition. It has been remarked that a relative ignorance is
sometimes useful for invention: it favors assurance. There are
inventions, especially scientific and industrial, that could not have
been made had the inventors been arrested by the ruling and presumably
invincible dogmas. The inventor was all the more free the more he was
unaware of them. Then, as it was quite necessary to bow before the
accomplished fact, theory was broadened to include the new discovery and
explain it.

(2) Chance, in the narrow sense, is a fortunate occurrence stimulating
invention: but to attribute to it the greater part, is a partial,
erroneous view. Here, what we call chance, is the meet