272 HERMANN VON HELMHOLTZ : 



familiar" to me, much to the astonishment of my 

 teachers. So far as I recollect, that came out in- 

 cidentally in the elementary school attached to the 

 Potsdam Training College, which I attended up to my 

 eighth year. Strict scientific methods, on the con- 

 trary, were new to me, and with their help I saw the 

 difficulties disappear which had hindered me in other 

 regions. 



One thing was wanting in geometry ; it dealt ex- 

 clusively with abstract forms of space, and I delighted 

 in complete reality. As I became bigger and stronger 

 I went about with my father and my schoolfellows a 

 great deal in the neighbourhood of rny native town, 

 Potsdam, and I acquired a great love of Nature. This 

 is perhaps the reason why the first fragments of physics 

 which I learned in the Grymnasium engrossed me 

 much more closely than purely geometrical and alge- 

 braical studies. Here there was a copious and multi- 

 farious region, with the mighty fulness of Nature, to be 

 brought under the dominion of a mentally appre- 

 hended law. And, in fact, that which first fascinated 

 me was the intellectual mastery over Nature, which at 

 first confronts us as so unfamiliar, by the logical force 

 of law. But this, of course, soon led to the recognition 

 that knowledge of natural processes was the magical key 

 which places ascendency over Nature in the hands of its 

 possessor. In this order of ideas I felt myself at home, 



