658 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sense ; I found myself in tlie most uncomfortable position in which 

 a boy could possibly be; languages and everything that is ac- 

 quired by their means, that gains praise and honor in the school, 

 were out of my reach ; and when the venerable rector of the gym- 

 nasium (Zimmermann), on one occasion of his examination of my 

 class, came to me and made a most cutting remonstrance with me 

 for my want of diligence, how I was the plague of my teachers 

 and the sorrow of my parents, and what did I think was to become 

 of me, and when I answered him that I would be a chemist, the 

 whole school and the good old man himself broke into an uncon- 

 trollable fit of laughter, for no one at the time had any idea that 

 chemistry was a thing that could be studied. 



Since the ordinary career of a gymnasium student was not 

 open to me, my father took me to an apothecary at Heppenheim 

 in the Hessian Bergstrasse ; but at the end of ten months he was 

 so tired of me that he sent me home again to my father. I wished 

 to be a chemist, but not a druggist. The ten months sufQced to 

 make me completely acquainted alike with the use and the mani- 

 fold applications of the thousand and one different things which 

 are found in a druggist's shop. 



Left to myself in this way, without advice and direction, I 

 completed my sixteenth year, and my persistent importunity at 

 last induced my father to give me permission to go to the Univer- 

 sity of Bonn ; whence I followed to Erlangen the Professor of 

 Chemistry, Kastner, who had been called to the Bavarian Univer- 

 sity. There arose at that time at the newly established University 

 of Bonn an extraordinary quickening of scientific life ; but the 

 degenerate philosophical methods of investigation, as they had 

 been embodied in Oken, and still worse in Wilbrand, had a most 

 pernicious influence on the branches of natural science, for it had 

 led alike in lecture and in study to a want of appreciation of ex- 

 periment and of an unprejudiced observation of Nature, which 

 was ruinous to many talented young men. 



From the professional chair the pupil received an abundance 

 of ingenious contemplations ; but, bodiless as they were, nothing 

 could be made of them. The lectures of Kastner, who was con- 

 sidered a most eminent chemist, were without order, illogical, and 

 arranged just like the jumble of knowledge which I carried about 

 in my head. The relations which he discovered between phenom- 

 ena were somewhat after the following pattern : 



" The influence of the moon upon the rain is clear, for as soon 

 as the moon is visible the thunderstorm ceases," or " the influence 

 of the sun's rays on water is shown by the rise of the water in the 

 shafts of mines, some of which can not be worked in the height 

 of summer." That we see the moon when the thunderstorm is 

 dispelled, and that the water rises in the mine when the brooks 



