66o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ysis was imparted, existed nowhere at that time. What passed 

 by that name were more like kitchens filled with all sorts of fur- 

 naces and utensils for the carrying out of metallurgical or phar- 

 maceutical processes. No one really understood how to teach it. 

 I afterward followed Kastner to Erlangen, where he had prom- 

 ised to analyze some minerals with me ; but unfortunately he did 

 not himself know how to do it, and he never carried out a single 

 analysis with me. 



The benefit which I gained through intercourse with other 

 students during my sojourn in Bonn and Erlangen was the dis- 

 covery of my ignorance in very many subjects which they brought 

 with them from school to the university, and since I got nothing 

 to do in chemistry I laid out all my energies to make up for my 

 previously neglected school studies. In Bonn and Erlangen small 

 numbers of students joined with me in a chemico-physical union, 

 in which every member in turn had to read a paper on the ques- 

 tion of the day, which, of course, consisted merely in a report on 

 the subjects of the essays which appeared monthly in Gilbert and 

 Schweigger's Journal, 



In Erlangen, Schelling's lectures attracted me for a time, but 

 Schelling possessed no thorough knowledge in the province of 

 natural science, and the dressing up of natural phenomena with 

 analogies and in images, which was called exposition, did not 

 suit me. I returned to Darmstadt fully persuaded that I could 

 not attain my ends in Germany. 



The dissertations of Berzelius — that is to say, the better trans- 

 lation of his handbook, which had a large circulation at that time 

 — were as springs in the desert. Mitscherlich, H. Rose, Wohler, 

 and Magnus had then repaired to Berzelius, in Stockholm ; but 

 Paris offered me means of instruction in many other branches of 

 natural science, as, for instance, physics, such as could be found 

 united in no other place. I made up my mind to go to Paris. I 

 was then seventeen and a half years old. My journey to Paris, 

 the way and manner in which I came in contact with Thenard, 

 Humboldt, Dulong, and with Gay-Lussac, and how the boy found 

 favor in the sight of those men, borders on the fabulous, and 

 would be out of place here. Since then it has frequently been my 

 experience that marked talent awakens in all men, I believe I may 

 say without exception, an irrepressible desire to bring about its 

 development. Each helps in his own way, and all together as if 

 they were acting in concert ; but talent only compels success if it 

 is united with a firm, indomitable will. External hindrances to 

 its development are in most cases very much less than those 

 which lie in men themselves ; for just as no one of the forces of 

 Nature, however mighty it may be, ever produces an effect by 

 itself alone, but always only in conjunction with other forces ; so 



