KARL FRIEDRICH GAUSS 247 



Joy of this kind was to Gauss actually the mainspring of 

 his work; he says that he carried on his scientific undertakings 

 only for their own sake; that is, from the innermost need of 

 his soul.^ This is also entirely in accord with the fact that 

 he was never in a hurry to publish, since this was a secondary 

 matter for him. On the other hand he thus attained to an 

 unshakable spiritual strength, which was connected with a 

 deeply religious sense. The foundation of it was a striving 

 for truth and a feeling for justice. He thus regarded the 

 spiritual life of the whole universe as a great system of justice 

 permeated with eternal truth, and this was the main source of 

 his impregnable faith that the life of man does not end with 

 death. 



MICHAEL FARADAY 



1791-1867 



Here again we have one of the greatest men of science, of 

 his kind incomparable, and unique in the endowment with 

 the peculiar mental constitution which makes the investi- 

 gator, who uses his senses to penetrate into the unknown, and 

 actually expects to see everywhere new things in plenty. He 

 detects the smallest sign of anything peculiar or not fully 

 understood, and then applies to it a mind already schooled 

 by the thorough study of nature, and completely adapted 

 to it, exhibiting the greatest patience in the pursuit and 

 multiplication of his observations, until the new thing has 

 been understood in its essentials, and thus has become a new 

 mental possession. The innumerable occasions on which 

 Faraday brought these gifts to bear in his laboratory had to 

 do with things of very varied importance; from discoveries 

 of the greatest possible range down to small explanations, 



1 See the contemporary recollections of Sartorius von Waltershausen, 

 Gauss zum Geddchtnis, Leipzig, 1856. 



