Stevens : Thomas I la riot 559 other mathematicians who subsequently examined them (even had they been animated by a historical spirit which did not belong to their genera- tion), to ascertain what the real historical value of the writings might be. Mr. Stevens thinks that he has given strong grounds for believing that great injustice has been done to Harriotts as a mathematician ; but this cannot be admitted. There are many mathematicians who delight in conception but shrink before the labors of parturition. If Harriotts was not one of these, he was, at any rate, prevented by other business from publishing his discoveries, of which, however, he seems to have made no secret. Scientific men, not wishing to be led astray from their own studies into difficult questions of the history of science, have adopted the handy rule that priority of publication must decide to whom a discov- ery belongs. This is just enough ; for if a man does not take the necessary trouble to give the world his own account of his discoveries, how does he merit a crown of glory for that which he has done for his own satisfaction? Justice, however, is not the question for the historian of science. He wishes to know whether, at a given stage of intellectual development, a given generalization was within the reach of a whole class of minds or only of one hero, and what form it would take in different minds. That Harriotts followed Viete in algebra is unquestionable. His terminology and notation prove it ; and he himself acknowledges it. It is true that some of his scholars speak as if he had been in possession of some of Viete's methods before the latter published them in 1591 ; and this may be. It is hardly likely that his papers would show whether it were so or not. The achievement for which he has usually had the credit was the bringing all the terms of an equation to one side, and the regarding the quantic so obtained as a product of linear factors some one of which must vanish and furnish the solution. To have done this in the sixteenth cen- tury implies a high order of mathematical power. In addition to this, he is usually credited with the common method of finding rational roots of numerical equations, and with the general idea of resolving such equa- tions by successive approximations. That is much. It is enough, in the judgment of most critics, to place him in the second rank of mathematic- ians — corresponding, let us say, to the rank of Horace, of Pope, of Wordsworth, of Lamartine, among poets. But this does not satisfy Mr. Stevens, who wishes him to be placed in the front rank — in the rank cor- responding to Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe. But this is too much ; and Mr. Stevens simply does not know what it is that he asks. He reminds me of the fisherman who asked to have his wife made pope. Harriotts plainly did not belong to the mental gender of the gigantic generalizers. He is said to have been the first to obtain the area of a spherical triangle ; and such is the sort of mathematical discovery which we might hope that the examination of his papers would bring to light. Certainly the Savilian Professor who reported about 1788 (not in 1802) against publishing some of the manuscripts, however sound the advice may have been under the particular circumstances existing at that junc- ture, gave an absurd reason for it when he said that they " could not con-
