418 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 
which so much depends, as well as to nourish indirectly 
the intellect and will, I took with me four works, com- 
prising two volumes of poetry, Goethe's " Farbenlehre," 
and the work on "Logic " recently published by Mr. Alex- 
ander Bain. In Goethe, so noble otherwise, I chiefly 
noticed the self-inflicted hurts of genius, as it broke itself 
in vain against the philosophy of Newton. Mr. Bain I 
found, for the most part, learned and practical, shining 
generally with a dry light, but exhibiting at times a flush 
of emotional strength, which proved that even logicians 
share the common fire of humanity. He interested me 
most when he became the mirror of my own condition. 
Neither intellectually nor socially is it good for man to be 
alone, and the sorrows of thought are more patiently borne 
when we find that they have been experienced by another. 
From certain passages in his book I could infer that Mr. 
Bain was no stranger to such sorrows. Speaking for ex- 
ample of the ebb of intellectual force, which we all fr6m 
time to time experience, Mr. Bain says: "The uncertainty 
where to look for the next opening of discovery brings the 
pain of conflict and the debility of indecision." These 
words have in them the true ring of personal experience. 
The action of the investigator is periodic. He grapples 
with a subject of inquiry, wrestles with it, and exhausts, it 
may be, both himself and it for the time being. He 
breathes a space, and then renews the struggle in another 
field. Now this period of halting between two investi- 
gations is not always one of pure repose. It is often a 
period of doubt and discomfort of gloom and ennui. 
" The uncertainty where to look for the next opening 
of discovery brings the pain of conflict and the debility of 
indecision." It was under such conditions that I had to 
equip myself for the hour and the ordeal that are now 
come. 
The disciplines of common life are, in great part, exer- 
cises in the relations of space, or in the mental grouping 
of bodies in space; and, by such exercises, the public 
mind is, to some extent, prepared for the reception of 
physical conceptions. Assuming this preparation on your 
part, the wisji gradually grew within me to trace, and to 
enable you to trace, some of the more occult features and 
operations of Light and Color. I wished, if possible, 
