_An Address delivered on the occasion of his Jubilee, 1891._
In the course of the past year, and most recently on the occasion
of the celebration of my seventieth birthday, and the subsequent
festivities, I have been overloaded with honours, with marks of respect
and of goodwill in a way which could never have been expected. My
own sovereign, his Majesty the German Emperor, has raised me to the
highest rank in the Civil Service; the Kings of Sweden and of Italy,
my former sovereign, the Grand Duke of Baden, and the President of the
French Republic, have conferred Grand Crosses on me; many academies,
not only of science, but also of the fine arts, faculties, and learned
societies spread over the whole world, from Tomsk to Melbourne, have
sent me diplomas, and richly illuminated addresses, expressing in
elevated language their recognition of my scientific endeavours, and
their thanks for those endeavours, in terms which I cannot read without
a feeling of shame. My native town, Potsdam, has conferred its freedom
on me. To all this must be added countless individuals, scientific and
personal friends, pupils, and others personally unknown to me, who have
sent their congratulations in telegrams and in letters.
But this is not all. You desire to make my name the banner, as it
were, of a magnificent institution which, founded by lovers of science
of all nations, is to encourage and promote scientific inquiry in
all countries. Science and art are, indeed, at the present time
the only remaining bond of peace between civilised nations. Their
ever-increasing development is a common aim of all; is effected by
the common work of all, and for the common good of all. A great and
a sacred work! The founders even wish to devote their gift to the
promotion of those branches of science which all my life I have
pursued, and thus bring me, with my shortcomings, before future
generations almost as an exemplar of scientific investigation. This
is the proudest honour which you could confer upon me, in so much as
you thereby show that I possess your unqualified favourable opinion.
But it would border on presumption were I to accept it without a quiet
expectation on my part that the judges of future centuries will not be
influenced by considerations of personal favour.
My personal appearance even, you have had represented in marble by a
master of the first rank, so that I shall appear to the present and
to future generations in a more ideal form; and another master of the
etching needle has ensured that faithful portraits of me shall be
distributed among my contemporaries.
I cannot fail to remember that all you have done is an expression of
the sincerest and warmest goodwill on your part, and that I am most
deeply indebted to you for it.
I must, however, be excused if the first effect of these abundant
honours is rather surprising and confusing to me than intelligible.
My own consciousness does not justify me in putting a measure of the
value of what I have tried to do, which would leave such a balance
in my favour as you have drawn. I know how simply everything I have
done has been brought about; how scientific methods worked out by my
predecessors have naturally led to certain results, and how frequently
a fortunate circumstance or a lucky accident has helped me. But the
chief difference is this--that which I have seen slowly growing from
small beginnings through months and years of toilsome and tentative
work, all that suddenly starts before you like Pallas fully equipped
from the head of Jupiter. A feeling of surprise has entered into your
estimate, but not into mine. At times, and perhaps even frequently,
my own estimate may possibly have been unduly lowered by the fatigue
of the work, and by vexation about all kinds of futile steps which I
had taken. My colleagues, as well as the public at large, estimate a
scientific or artistic work according to the utility, the instruction,
or the pleasure which it has afforded. An author is usually disposed
to base his estimate on the labour it has cost him, and it is but
seldom that both kinds of judgment agree. It can, on the other hand, be
seen from incidental expressions of some of the most celebrated men,
especially of artists, that they lay but small weight on productions
which seem to us inimitable, compared with others which have been
difficult, and yet which appear to readers and observers as much less
successful. I need only mention Goethe, who once stated to Eckermann
that he did not estimate his poetical works so highly as what he had
done in the theory of colours.
The same may have happened to me, though in a more modest degree, if I
may accept your assurances and those of the authors of the addresses
which have reached me. Permit me, therefore, to give you a short
account of the manner in which I have been led to the special direction
of my work.
In my first seven years I was a delicate boy, for long confined to
my room, and often even to bed; but, nevertheless, I had a strong
inclination towards occupation and mental activity. My parents busied
themselves a good deal with me; picture books and games, especially
with wooden blocks, filled up the rest of the time. Reading came
pretty early, which, of course, greatly increased the range of my
occupations. But a defect of my mental organisation showed itself
almost as early, in that I had a bad memory for disconnected things.
The first indication of this I consider to be the difficulty I had
in distinguishing between left and right; afterwards, when at school
I began with languages, I had greater difficulties than others in
learning words, irregular grammatical forms, and peculiar terms of
expression. History as then taught to us I could scarcely master. To
learn prose by heart was martyrdom. This defect has, of course, only
increased, and is a vexation of my mature age.
But when I possessed small mnemotechnical methods, or merely such as
are afforded by the metre and rhyme of poetry, learning by heart,
and the retention of what I had learnt, went on better. I easily
remembered poems by great authors, but by no means so easily the
somewhat artificial verses of authors of the second rank. I think that
is probably due to the natural flow of thought in good poems, and I am
inclined to think that in this connection is to be found an essential
basis of æsthetic beauty. In the higher classes of the Gymnasium I
could repeat some books of the Odyssey, a considerable number of the
odes of Horace, and large stores of German poetry. In other directions
I was just in the position of our older ancestors, who were not able
to write, and hence expressed their laws and their history in verse, so
as to learn them by heart.
That which a man does easily he usually does willingly; hence I was
first of all a great admirer and lover of poetry. This inclination was
encouraged by my father, who, while he had a strict sense of duty,
was also of an enthusiastic disposition, impassioned for poetry, and
particularly for the classic period of German Literature. He taught
German in the upper classes of the Gymnasium, and read Homer with us.
Under his guidance we did, alternately, themes in German prose and
metrical exercises--poems as we called them. But even if most of us
remained indifferent poets, we learned better in this way, than in any
other I know of, how to express what we had to say in the most varied
manner.
But the most perfect mnemotechnical help is a knowledge of the laws
of phenomena. This I first got to know in geometry. From the time
of my childish playing with wooden blocks, the relations of special
proportions to each other were well known to me from actual perception.
What sort of figures were produced when bodies of regular shape were
laid against each other I knew well without much consideration. When
I began the scientific study of geometry, all the facts which I had
to learn were perfectly well known and familiar to me, much to the
astonishment of my teachers. So far as I recollect, that came out
incidentally in the elementary school attached to the Potsdam Training
College, which I attended up to my eighth year. Strict scientific
methods, on the contrary, were new to me, and with their help I saw the
difficulties disappear which had hindered me in other regions.
One thing was wanting in geometry; it dealt exclusively with abstract
forms of space, and I delighted in complete reality. As I became bigger
and stronger I went about with my father and my schoolfellows a great
deal in the neighbourhood of my native town, Potsdam, and I acquired
a great love of Nature. This is perhaps the reason why the first
fragments of physics which I learned in the Gymnasium engrossed me much
more closely than purely geometrical and algebraical studies. Here
there was a copious and multifarious region, with the mighty fulness
of Nature, to be brought under the dominion of a mentally apprehended
law. And, in fact, that which first fascinated me was the intellectual
mastery over Nature, which at first confronts us as so unfamiliar,
by the logical force of law. But this, of course, soon led to the
recognition that knowledge of natural processes was the magical key
which places ascendency over Nature in the hands of its possessor. In
this order of ideas I felt myself at home.
I plunged then with great zeal and pleasure into the study of all
the books on physics I found in my father’s library. They were very
old-fashioned; phlogiston still held sway, and galvanism had not
grown beyond the voltaic pile. A young friend and myself tried, with
our small means, all sorts of experiments about which we had read.
The action of acids on our mothers’ stores of linen we investigated
thoroughly; we had otherwise but little success. Most successful was,
perhaps, the construction of optical instruments by means of spectacle
glasses, which were to be had in Potsdam, and a small botanical lens
belonging to my father. The limitation of our means had at that time
the value that I was compelled always to vary in all possible ways my
plans for experiments, until I got them in a form in which I could
carry them out. I must confess that many a time when the class was
reading Cicero or Virgil, both of which I found very tedious, I was
calculating under the desk the path of rays in a telescope, and I
discovered, even at that time, some optical theorems, not ordinarily
met with in text-books, but which I afterwards found useful in the
construction of the ophthalmoscope.
Thus it happened that I entered upon that special line of study to
which I have subsequently adhered, and which, in the conditions I
have mentioned, grew into an absorbing impulse, amounting even to a
passion. This impulse to dominate the actual world by acquiring an
understanding of it, or what, I think, is only another expression for
the same thing, to discover the causal connection of phenomena, has
guided me through my whole life, and the strength of this impulse is
possibly the reason why I found no satisfaction in apparent solutions
of problems so long as I felt there were still obscure points in them.
And now I was to go to the university. Physics was at that time looked
upon as an art by which a living could not be made. My parents were
compelled to be very economical, and my father explained to me that he
knew of no other way of helping me to the study of Physics, than by
taking up the study of medicine into the bargain. I was by no means
averse from the study of living Nature, and assented to this without
much difficulty. Moreover, the only influential person in our family
had been a medical man, the late Surgeon-General Mursinna; and this
relationship was a recommendation in my favour among other applicants
for admission to our Army Medical School, the Friedrich Wilhelms
Institut, which very materially helped the poorer students in passing
through their medical course.
In this study I came at once under the influence of a profound
teacher--Johannes Müller; he who at the same time introduced E.
Du Bois-Reymond, E. Brücke, C. Ludwig, and Virchow to the study of
anatomy and physiology. As respects the critical questions about the
nature of life, Müller still struggled between the older--essentially
the metaphysical--view and the naturalistic one, which was then being
developed; but the conviction that nothing could replace the knowledge
of facts forced itself upon him with increasing certainty, and it may
be that his influence over his students was the greater because he
still so struggled.
Young people are ready at once to attack the deepest problems, and thus
I attacked the perplexing question of the nature of the vital force.
Most physiologists had at that time adopted G. E. Stahl’s way out of
the difficulty, that while it is the physical and chemical forces of
the organs and substances of the living body which act on it, there
is an indwelling vital soul or vital force which could bind and loose
the activity of these forces; that after death the free action of
these forces produces decomposition, while during life their action is
continually being controlled by the soul of life. I had a misgiving
that there was something against nature in this explanation; but it
took me a good deal of trouble to state my misgiving in the form of a
definite question. I found ultimately, in the latter years of my career
as a student, that Stahl’s theory ascribed to every living body the
nature of a _perpetuum mobile_. I was tolerably well acquainted with
the controversies on this latter subject. In my school days I had
heard it discussed by my father and our mathematical teachers, and
while still a pupil of the Friedrich Wilhelms Institut I had helped in
the library, and in my spare moments had looked through the works of
Daniell, Bernouilli, D’Alembert, and other mathematicians of the last
century. I thus came upon the question, ‘What relations must exist
between the various kinds of natural forces for a perpetual motion to
be possible?’ and the further one, ‘Do those relations actually exist?’
In my essay, ‘On the Conservation of Force,’ my aim was merely to give
a critical investigation and arrangement of the facts for the benefit
of physiologists.
I should have been quite prepared if the experts had ultimately said,
‘We know all that. What is this young doctor thinking about, in
considering himself called upon to explain it all to us so fully?’
But, to my astonishment, the physical authorities with whom I came in
contact took up the matter quite differently. They were inclined to
deny the correctness of the law, and in the eager contest in which
they were engaged against Hegel’s Natural Philosophy were disposed
to declare my essay to be a fantastical speculation. Jacobi, the
mathematician, who recognised the connection of my line of thought
with that of the mathematicians of the last century, was the only
one who took an interest in my attempt, and protected me from being
misconceived. On the other hand, I met with enthusiastic applause and
practical help from my younger friends, and especially from E. Du Bois
Reymond. These, then, soon brought over to my side the members of the
recently formed Physical Society of Berlin. About Joule’s researches on
the same subject I knew at that time but little, and nothing at all of
those of Robert Mayer.
Connected with this were a few smaller experimental researches on
putrefaction and fermentation, in which I was able to furnish a proof,
in opposition to Liebig’s contention, that both were by no means purely
chemical decompositions, spontaneously occurring, or brought about by
the aid of the atmospheric oxygen; that alcoholic fermentation more
especially was bound up with the presence of yeast spores which are
only formed by reproduction. There was, further, my work on metabolism
in muscular action, which afterwards was connected with that on the
development of heat in muscular action; these being processes which
were to be expected from the law of the conservation of force.
These researches were sufficient to direct upon me the attention of
Johannes Müller as well as of the Prussian Ministry of Instruction,
and to lead to my being called to Berlin as Brücke’s successor, and
immediately thereupon to the University of Königsberg. The Army medical
authorities, with thank-worthy liberality, very readily agreed to
relieve me from the obligation to further military service, and thus
made it possible for me to take up a scientific position.
In Königsberg I had to lecture on general pathology and physiology.
A university professor undergoes a very valuable training in being
compelled to lecture every year, on the whole range of his science, in
such a manner that he convinces and satisfies the intelligent among his
hearers--the leading men of the next generation. This necessity yielded
me, first of all, two valuable results.
For in preparing my course of lectures, I hit directly on the
possibility of the ophthalmoscope, and then on the plan of measuring
the rate of propagation of excitation in the nerves.
The ophthalmoscope is, perhaps, the most popular of my scientific
performances, but I have already related to the oculists how luck
really played a comparatively more important part than my own merit. I
had to explain to my hearers Brücke’s theory of ocular illumination. In
this, Brücke was actually within a hair’s breadth of the invention of
the ophthalmoscope. He had merely neglected to put the question, To
what optical image do the rays belong, which come from the illuminated
eye? For the purpose he then had in view it was not necessary to
propound this question. If he had put it, he was quite the man to
answer it as quickly as I could, and the plan of the ophthalmoscope
would have been given. I turned the problem about in various ways, to
see how I could best explain it to my hearers, and I thereby hit upon
the question I have mentioned. I knew well, from my medical studies,
the difficulties which oculists had about the conditions then comprised
under the name of Amaurosis, and I at once set about constructing
the instrument by means of spectacle glasses and the glass used for
microscope purposes. The instrument was at first difficult to use, and
without an assured theoretical conviction that it must work, I might,
perhaps, not have persevered. But in about a week I had the great joy
of being the first who saw clearly before him a living human retina.
The construction of the ophthalmoscope had a very decisive influence on
my position in the eyes of the world. From this time forward I met with
the most willing recognition and readiness to meet my wishes on the
part of the authorities and of my colleagues, so that for the future I
was able to pursue far more freely the secret impulses of my desire for
knowledge. I must, however, say that I ascribed my success in great
measure to the circumstance that, possessing some geometrical capacity,
and equipped with a knowledge of physics, I had, by good fortune,
been thrown among medical men, where I found in physiology a virgin
soil of great fertility; while, on the other hand, I was led by the
consideration of the vital processes to questions and points of view
which are usually foreign to pure mathematicians and physicists. Up to
that time I had only been able to compare my mathematical abilities
with those of my fellow-pupils and of my medical colleagues; that I was
for the most part superior to them in this respect did not, perhaps,
say very much. Moreover, mathematics was always regarded in the school
as a branch of secondary rank. In Latin composition, on the contrary,
which then decided the palm of victory, more than half my fellow-pupils
were ahead of me.
In my own consciousness, my researches were simple logical applications
of the experimental and mathematical methods developed in science,
which by slight modifications could be easily adapted to the particular
object in view. My colleagues and friends, who, like myself, had
devoted themselves to the physical aspect of physiology, furnished
results no less surprising.
But in the course of time matters could not remain in that stage.
Problems which might be solved by known methods I had gradually to
hand over, to the pupils in my laboratory, and for my own part turn to
more difficult researches, where success was uncertain, where general
methods left the investigator in the lurch, or where the method itself
had to be worked out.
In those regions also which come nearer the boundaries of our knowledge
I have succeeded in many things experimental and mechanical--I do not
know if I may add philosophical. In respect of the former, like any one
who has attacked many experimental problems, I had become a person of
experience, who was acquainted with many plans and devices, and I had
changed my youthful habit of considering things geometrically into a
kind of mechanical mode of view. I felt, intuitively as it were, how
strains and stresses were distributed in any mechanical arrangement,
a faculty also met with in experienced mechanicians and machine
constructors. But I had the advantage over them of being able to make
complicated and specially important relations perspicuous, by means of
theoretical analysis.
I have also been in a position to solve several mathematical physical
problems, and some, indeed, on which the great mathematicians, since
the time of Euler, had in vain occupied themselves; for example,
questions as to vortex motion and the discontinuity of motion in
liquids, the question as to the motion of sound at the open ends
of organ pipes, &c. &c. But the pride which I might have felt about
the final result in these cases was considerably lowered by my
consciousness that I had only succeeded in solving such problems
after many devious ways, by the gradually increasing generalisation
of favourable examples, and by a series of fortunate guesses. I had
to compare myself with an Alpine climber, who, not knowing the way,
ascends slowly and with toil, and is often compelled to retrace his
steps because his progress is stopped; sometimes by reasoning, and
sometimes by accident, he hits upon traces of a fresh path, which again
leads him a little further; and finally, when he has reached the goal,
he finds to his annoyance a royal road on which he might have ridden
up if he had been clever enough to find the right starting-point at
the outset. In my memoirs I have, of course, not given the reader an
account of my wanderings, but I have described the beaten path on which
he can now reach the summit without trouble.
There are many people of narrow views, who greatly admire themselves,
if once in a way, they have had a happy idea, or believe they have
had one. An investigator, or an artist, who is continually having a
great number of happy ideas, is undoubtedly a privileged being, and
is recognised as a benefactor of humanity. But who can count or
measure such mental flashes? Who can follow the hidden tracts by which
conceptions are connected?
That which man had never known,
Or had not thought out,
Through the labyrinth of mind
Wanders in the night.
I must say that those regions, in which we have not to rely on lucky
accidents and ideas, have always been most agreeable to me, as fields
of work.
But, as I have often been in the unpleasant position of having to
wait for lucky ideas, I have had some experience as to when and where
they came to me, which will perhaps be useful to others. They often
steal into the line of thought without their importance being at first
understood; then afterwards some accidental circumstance shows how
and under what conditions they have originated; they are present,
otherwise, without our knowing whence they came. In other cases they
occur suddenly, without exertion, like an inspiration. As far as my
experience goes, they never came at the desk or to a tired brain.
I have always so turned my problem about in all directions that I
could see in my mind its turns and complications, and run through
them freely without writing them down. But to reach that stage was
not usually possible without long preliminary work. Then, after the
fatigue from this had passed away, an hour of perfect bodily repose
and quiet comfort was necessary before the good ideas came. They often
came actually in the morning on waking, as expressed in Goethe’s words
which I have quoted, and as Gauss also has remarked.[31] But, as I have
stated in Heidelberg, they were usually apt to come when comfortably
ascending woody hills in sunny weather. The smallest quantity of
alcoholic drink seemed to frighten them away.
[Footnote 31: Gauss, _Werke_, vol. v. p. 609. ‘The law of induction
discovered Jan. 23, 1835, at 7 A.M., before rising.’]
Such moments of fruitful thought were indeed very delightful, but not
so the reverse, when the redeeming ideas did not come. For weeks or
months I was gnawing at such a question until in my mind I was
Like to a beast upon a barren heath
Dragged in a circle by an evil spirit,
While all around are pleasant pastures green.
And, lastly, it was often a sharp attack of headache which released me
from this strain, and set me free for other interests.
I have entered upon still another region to which I was led by
investigation on perception and observation of the senses, namely,
the theory of cognition. Just as a physicist has to examine the
telescope and galvanometer with which he is working; has to get a clear
conception of what he can attain with them, and how they may deceive
him; so, too, it seemed to me necessary to investigate likewise the
capabilities of our power of thought. Here, also, we were concerned
only with a series of questions of fact about which definite answers
could and must be given. We have distinct impressions of the senses,
in consequence of which we know how to act. The success of the
action usually agrees with that which was to have been anticipated,
but sometimes also not, in what are called subjective impressions.
These are all objective facts, the laws regulating which it will be
possible to find. My principal result was that the impressions of the
senses are only signs for the constitution of the external world, the
interpretation of which must be learned by experience. The interest
for questions of the theory of cognition, had been implanted in me in
my youth, when I had often heard my father, who had retained a strong
impression from Fichter’s idealism, dispute with his colleagues who
believed in Kant or Hegel. Hitherto I have had but little reason to be
proud about those investigations. For each one in my favour, I have
had about ten opponents; and I have in particular aroused all the
metaphysicians, even the materialistic ones, and all people of hidden
metaphysical tendencies. But the addresses of the last few days have
revealed a host of friends whom as yet I did not know; so that in this
respect also I am indebted to this festivity for pleasure and for
fresh hope. Philosophy, it is true, has been for nearly three thousand
years the battle-ground for the most violent differences of opinion,
and it is not to be expected that these can be settled in the course of
a single life.
I have wished to explain to you how the history of my scientific
endeavours and successes, so far as they go, appears when looked at
from my own point of view, and you will perhaps understand that I am
surprised at the universal profusion of praise which you have poured
out upon me. My successes have had primarily this value for my own
estimate of myself, that they furnished a standard of what I might
further attempt; but they have not, I hope, led me to self-admiration.
I have often enough seen how injurious an exaggerated sense of
self-importance may be for a scholar, and hence I have always taken
great care not to fall a prey to this enemy. I well knew that a
rigid self-criticism of my own work and my own capabilities was the
protection and palladium against this fate. But it is only needful
to keep the eyes open for what others can do, and what one cannot do
oneself, to find there is no great danger; and, as regards my own work,
I do not think I have ever corrected the last proof of a memoir without
finding in the course of twenty-four hours a few points which I could
have done better or more carefully.
As regards the thanks which you consider you owe me, I should be unjust
if I said that the good of humanity appeared to me, from the outset,
as the conscious object of my labours. It was, in fact, the special
form of my desire for knowledge which impelled me and determined me,
to employ in scientific research all the time which was not required
by my official duties and by the care for my family. These two
restrictions did not, indeed, require any essential deviation from the
aims I was striving for. My office required me to make myself capable
of delivering lectures in the University; my family, that I should
establish and maintain my reputation as an investigator. The State,
which provided my maintenance, scientific appliances, and a great share
of my free time, had, in my opinion, acquired thereby the right that I
should communicate faithfully and completely to my fellow-citizens, and
in a suitable form, that which I had discovered by its help.
The writing out of scientific investigations is usually a troublesome
affair; at any rate it has been so to me. Many parts of my memoirs I
have rewritten five or six times, and have changed the order about
until I was fairly satisfied. But the author has a great advantage in
such a careful wording of his work. It compels him to make the severest
criticism of each sentence and each conclusion, more thoroughly even
than the lectures at the University which I have mentioned. I have
never considered an investigation finished until it was formulated in
writing, completely and without any logical deficiencies.
Those among my friends who were most conversant with the matter
represented to my mind, my conscience as it were. I asked myself
whether they would approve of it. They hovered before me as the
embodiment of the scientific spirit of an ideal humanity, and furnished
me with a standard.
In the first half of my life, when I had still to work for my external
position, I will not say that, along with a desire for knowledge and a
feeling of duty as servant of the State, higher ethical motives were
not also at work; it was, however, in any case difficult to be certain
of the reality of their existence so long as selfish motives were
still existent. This is, perhaps, the case with all investigators. But
afterwards, when an assured position has been attained, when those who
have no inner impulse towards science may quite cease their labours, a
higher conception of their relation to humanity does influence those
who continue to work. They gradually learn from their own experience
how the thoughts which they have uttered, whether through literature
or through oral instruction, continue to act on their fellow-men, and
possess, as it were, an independent life; how these thoughts, further
worked out by their pupils, acquire a deeper significance and a more
definite form, and, reacting on their originators, furnish them with
fresh instruction. The ideas of an individual, which he himself has
conceived, are of course more closely connected with his mental field
of view than extraneous ones, and he feels more encouragement and
satisfaction when he sees the latter more abundantly developed than the
former. A kind of parental affection for such a mental child ultimately
springs up, which leads him to care and to struggle for the furtherance
of his mental offspring as he does for his real children.
But, at the same time, the whole intellectual world of civilised
humanity presents itself to him as a continuous and spontaneously
developing whole, the duration of which seems infinite as compared
with that of a single individual. With his small contributions to the
building up of science, he sees that he is in the service of something
everlastingly sacred, with which he is connected by close bands of
affection. His work thereby appears to him more sanctified. Anyone can,
perhaps, apprehend this theoretically, but actual personal experience
is doubtless necessary to develop this idea into a strong feeling.
The world, which is not apt to believe in ideal motives, calls this
feeling love of fame. But there is a decisive criterion by which both
kinds of sentiment can be discriminated. Ask the question if it is
the same thing to you whether the results of investigation which you
have obtained are recognised as belonging to you or not when there
are no considerations of external advantage bound up with the answer
to this question. The reply to it is easiest in the case of chiefs
of laboratories. The teacher must usually furnish the fundamental
idea of the research as well as a number of proposals for overcoming
experimental difficulties, in which more or less ingenuity comes into
play. All this passes as the work of the student, and ultimately
appears in his name when the research is finished. Who can afterwards
decide what one or the other has done? And how many teachers are there
not who in this respect are devoid of any jealousy?
Thus, gentlemen, I have been in the happy position that, in freely
following my own inclination, I have been led to researches for which
you praise me, as having been useful and instructive. I am extremely
fortunate that I am praised and honoured by my contemporaries, in so
high a degree, for a course of work which is to me the most interesting
I could pursue. But my contemporaries have afforded me great and
essential help. Apart from the care for my own existence and that of
my family, of which they have relieved me, and apart from the external
means with which they have provided me, I have found in them a standard
of the intellectual capacity of man; and by their sympathy for my work
they have evoked in me a vivid conception of the universal mental life
of humanity which has enabled me to see the value of my own researches
in a higher light. In these circumstances, I can only regard as a free
gift the thanks which you desire to accord to me, given unconditionally
and without counting on any return.
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. LTD., NEW STREET SQUARE
LONDON