Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 | Page 6

weekly meeting, as well as
of visitors, was always kept; and these lists (I have been informed) have
been carefully preserved. No doubt any one interested in the question
would, upon application to the secretary (Professor De Morgan), obtain
ready access to these documents.

The preceding remarks will, in some degree, furnish the elements of an
answer to the inquiry, "Why did geometrical speculation take so much
deeper root amongst the Lancashire weavers, than amongst any other
classes of artisans?" The subject was better adapted to the weaver's
mechanical life than any other that could be named; for even the other
favourite subjects, botany and entomology, required the suspension of
their proper employment at the loom. The formation of the Oldham
Society was calculated to keep alive the aspiration for distinction, as
well as to introduce novices into the arcanium of geometry. There was
generous co-operation, and there was keen competition,--the sure
stimulants to eminent success. The unadulterated love of any
intellectual pursuit, apart from the love of fame or the hope of
emolument, is a rare quality in all stages of society. Few men, however,
seem to have realised Basil Montagu's idea of being governed by "a
love of excellence rather than the pride of _excelling_," so closely as
the Lancashire geometers of that period--uncultivated as was the age in
which they lived, rude as was the society in which their lives were
passed, and selfish as the brutal treatment received in those days by
mechanics from their employers, was calculated to render them. They
were surrounded, enveloped, by the worst social and moral influences;
yet, so far as can now be gathered from isolated remarks in the
periodicals of the time, they may be held up as a pattern worthy of the
imitation of the philosophers of our own time in respect to the
generosity and strict honour which marked their intercourse with one
another.
Mathematicians seldom grow up solitarily in any locality. When one
arises, the absence of all external and social incentives to the study can
only betoken an inherent propensity and constitutional fitness for it.
Such a man is too much in earnest to keep his knowledge to himself, or
to wish to stand alone. He makes disciples,--he aids, encourages, guides
them. His own researches are fully communicated; and this with a
prodigality proportioned to his own great resources. He feels no
jealousy of competition, and is always gratified by seeing others
successful. Thus such bodies of men are created in wonderfully short
periods by the magnanimous labours of one ardent {438} spirit. These
are the men that found societies, schools, sects; wherever one unselfish

and earnest man settles down, there we invariably find a cluster of
students of his subject, that often lasts for ages. Take, for instance,
Leeds. There we see that John Ryley created, at a later period, the
Yorkshire school of geometers; comprising amongst its members such
men as Swale, Whitley, Ryley ("Sam"), Gawthorp, Settle, and John
Baines. This, too, was in a district in many respects very analogous to
Lancashire, but especially in the one to which the argument more
immediately relates:--it was a district of weavers, only substituting
wool for cotton, as cotton had in the other case been substituted for the
silk of Spitalfields.
We see nothing like this in the agricultural districts; neither do we in
those districts where the ordinary manufacturing operations themselves
require the employment of the head as well as the hands and feet. With
the exception, indeed, of the schoolmaster, and the exciseman, and the
surveyor, there are comparatively few instances of persons whose
employment was not strictly sedentary having devoted their intellectual
energies to mathematics, independent of early cultivation. To them the
subject was more or less professional, and their devotion to it was to be
expected--indeed far more than has been realised. It is professional now
to a larger and more varied class of men, and of course there is a
stronger body of non-academic mathematicians now than at any former
period. At the same time it may be doubted whether there be even as
many really able men devoted to science purely and for its own sake in
this country as there were a century ago, when science wore a more
humble guise.
Combining what is here said with the masterly analysis which MR.
WILKINSON has given of the books which were accessible to these
men, it appears that we shall be able to form a correct view on the
subject of the Lancashire geometers. Of course documentary evidence
would be desirable--it would certainly be interesting too.
To such of your readers as have not seen the mathematical periodicals
of that period, the materials for which were furnished by these men, it
may be sufficient to state that the "NOTES AND QUERIES"