4 oo HERMANN VON HELMHOLTZ 



sculptor, Adolf Hildebrand, who has so admirably preserved 

 your features for the coming generations. But since such 

 a bust is a ponderous possession to many, even as a plaster 

 cast, we have commissioned Jacobi's etching pen to make your 

 features more generally accessible in the guise of this picture. 

 Even this did not content us, and we were fortunately able, 

 with the large funds at our disposal, to go much further. We 

 resolved to endow a foundation at the Academy of Sciences 

 in your name, and from time to time to bestow a medal bearing 

 your portrait and your name on some distinguished scholar 

 and worker in one of the innumerable fields of your activities. 

 I have the pleasure of handing you the first copy of the medal/ 



The great banquet, which brought 260 friends and admirers 

 of Helmholtz together at the Kaiserhof on November 2, ex- 

 cited deep and universal interest, on account of the speech 

 made by him at the dinner, which became widely known in 

 the course of the year, and is usually regarded as auto- 

 biographical. One extract only can be given here. ' My results 

 have been of value in my estimation of myself, only in so far 

 as they have given me a standard of what I might attempt to 

 investigate farther; they have not, I hope, led me into self- 

 adulation. I have often enough seen how injurious megalomania 

 may be for a student, and so have always tried to prevent myself 

 from falling into the clutches of this enemy. I knew that strict 

 criticism of one's own work and one's own capacities was the 

 best palladium to protect one against such a catastrophe. After 

 all, one only needs to keep one's eyes open for what others can 

 do and oneself cannot. I do not think the danger is very 

 great, and as regards my own work I doubt if I have ever 

 finished the last corrections of any paper, without finding some 

 points twenty-four hours later which I could have made better 

 or more complete. 



' I know how simply everything I have done has come about, 

 how the scientific methods developed by my predecessors have 

 led me logically to the point, how at times a favourable 

 accident or lucky circumstance has helped me. But the chief 

 difference lies here: what I have seen slowly growing from 

 small beginnings through months and years of tedious and 

 often enough of tentative work, from invisible germs, has 

 suddenly sprung out before your eyes like the armed Pallas 



