104 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



ical science. Indeed, I believe it would be possible so to 

 limit and arrange the study of a portion of physics as 

 to render the mental exercise involved in it almost quali- 

 tatively the same as that involved in the unravelling of a 

 language. 



I have thus far confined myself to the purely intellect- 

 ual side of this question. But man is not all intellect. If 

 he were so, science would, I believe, be his proper nutri- 

 ment. But he feels as well as thinks; he is receptive of 

 the sublime and beautiful as well as of the true. Indeed, 

 I believe that even the intellectual action of a complete 

 man is, consciously or unconsciously, sustained by an un- 

 dercurrent of the emotions. It is vain to attempt to sep- 

 arate the moral and emotional from the intellectual. Let 

 a man but observe himself, and he will, if I mistake not, 

 find that in nine cases out of ten, the emotions constitute 

 the motive force which pushes his intellect into action. 

 The reading of the works of two men, neither of them im- 

 bued with the spirit of modern science neither of them, 

 indeed, friendly to that spirit has placed me here to-day. 

 These men are the English Carlyle and the American 

 Emerson. I must ever gratefully remember that through 

 three long cold German winters Carlyle placed me in my 

 tub, even when ice was on its surface, at five o'clock 

 every morning not slavishly, but cheerfully, meeting each 

 day's studies with a resolute will, determined whether vic- 

 tor or vanquished not to shrink from difficulty. I never 

 should have gone through Analytical Geometry and the 

 Calculus had it not been for those men. I never should 

 have become a physical investigator, and hence without 

 them I should not have been here to-day. They told me 

 what I ought to do in a way that caused me to do it, and 



