They are, indeed, precisely analogous to such a peak which all discoverers are attempting to scale at once; and the fact that three men make at once the same discovery does no more to show that it could have been made by the majority of their fellow-workers, and that it was in reality made not by themselves but by their generation, than the fact that three men of exceptional nerve and endurance meet at last on some previously virgin summit proves the feat to have been accomplished less by these men themselves than by the mass of tourists who thronged the hotel below and whose climbing exploits were limited to an ascent by the Rigi Railway.
Other writers, however, try to reach Mr.Kidd's conclusion by a somewhat different route.

Whether the great man is or is not a more common phenomenon than he seems to be, they maintain that his conquests in the realms of invention and discovery, when once made, really "become common property," of which all men could take advantage if it were not for artificial monopolies.

All men, therefore, though not equal as discoverers, are practically equalised by whatever the discoverers accomplish.

Now, of the simpler inventions and discoveries, such as that of fire for example, this is perfectly true; but it is true of these only.

As inventions and discoveries grow more and more complex, they no more become common property, as soon as certain men have made them, than encyclopaedic knowledge becomes the property of every one who buys or happens to inherit an edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_.