LITTLE 

 JOURNEYS 



scopes. QHerschel's enthusiasm for his beloved sci- 

 ence never abated. But often his imagination outran 

 his facts. Great minds divine the thing first they see 

 it with their inward eye. Yet there may be danger in 

 this, for in one's anxiety to prove what he first only 

 imagined, small proof suffices. 



Thus Herschel was for many years sure that the moon 

 had an atmosphere and was inhabited; he thought that 

 he had seen clear through the Milky Way and dis- 

 covered empty space beyond; he calculated distances, 

 and announced how far Castor was from Pollux; he 

 even made a guess as to how long it took for gaseous 

 nebula to resolve itself into a planetary system; he 

 believed the sun was a molten mass of fire a thing 

 many believed until they saw the incandescent electric 

 lamp and in various other ways made daring proph- 

 ecies which science has not only failed to corroborate, 

 but which we now know as errors. 

 But the intensity of his nature was both his virtue and 

 his weakness. Men who do nothing and say nothing are 

 never ridiculous. Those who hope much, believe much 

 and love much, make mistakes. Constant effort and 

 frequent mistakes are the stepping-stones of genius. 

 Q In all, Herschel contributed sixty-seven important 

 papers to the proceedings of the Royal Society, and in 

 one of these written in his eightieth year he says, " My 

 enthusiasm has occasionally led me astray, and I wish 

 now to correct a statement I made to you twenty- 

 eight years ago." He then enumerates some particular 

 statement about the height of mountains in the moon, 

 152 



