with a view to deduce therefrom the laws by which the world is governed,
and which constitute science. Copernicus devoted his life to the study of
numerous facts, by aid of which he was at length enabled to give to the
world a knowledge of the great fact that the earth revolved around the
sun; but he had therein, from the moment of its publication, no more
property than had the most violent of his opponents., The discovery of
other laws occupied the life of Kepler, but he had no property in them.
Newton spent many years of his life in the composition of his "Principia,"
yet in that he had no copyright, except for the mere clothing in which his
ideas were placed before the world. The body was common property. So, too,
with Bacon and Locke, Leibnitz and Descartes, Franklin, Priestley, and
Davy, Quesnay, Turgot, and Adam Smith, Lamarck and Cuvier, and all other
men who have aided in carrying science to the point at which it has now
arrived. They have had no property in their ideas. If they labored, it was
because they had a thirst for knowledge. They could expect no pecuniary
reward, nor had they much reason even to hope for fame. New ideas were,
necessarily, a subject of controversy; and cases are, even in our time,
not uncommon, in which the announcement of an idea at variance with those
commonly recorded has tended greatly to the diminution of the enjoyment of
life by the man by whom it has been announced. The contemporaries of
Harvey could scarcely be made to believe in the circulation of the blood.
Mr. Owen might have lived happily in the enjoyment of a large fortune had
he not conceived new views of society. These he gave to the world in the
form of a book, that led him into controversy which has almost lasted out
his life, while the effort to carry his ideas into effect has cost him his
fortune. Admit that he had been right, and that the correctness of his
views were now fully established, he would have in them no property
whatever; nor would his books be now yielding him a shilling, because
later writers would be placing them before the world in other and more
attractive clothing. So is it with the books of all the men I have named.