NEW CONCEPTIONS IN SCIENCE 



moreover, as the volume of letters to and from 

 Renan disclosed, an admirable writer of letters. 

 His polemics with Pasteur, his antithesis in all save 

 their common genius for experimentation and work, 

 told that he wields a dexterous blade. 



Some little points in his psychology are reported 

 by the eminent physician who made M. Berthelot 

 one of his studies of men of genius. The first is that 

 the frontal lobes of his skull, which are separate in 

 infancy, grew together much later than happens 

 usually. Helmholtz was slightly hydrocephalic as 

 a child. The receipt for genius would seem to be: 

 Plenty of brain-space. The second, that the experi- 

 ments leading to his discoveries have never been 

 the result of carefully followed trains of thought, 

 of pure ratiocination, but have just come of them- 

 selves, so to speak, from a clear sky. A third, that 

 he sleeps lightly, and all his life has been a persist- 

 ent dreamer, so much so that at one time he studied 

 his dreams with the thought of turning them to 

 account in his work. Yet never have they given 

 him a single hint or idea or suggestion of any value 

 whatever. In his letters to Renan he remarks that 

 his early predispositions to a gloomy view of the 

 future, his constant apprehensions, and a rather 

 pessimistic outlook on life, have never left him. 

 Yet his family and private relations have been 

 almost ideal, and his career one long series of un- 



192 



