104 LIFE AND WORK OF SIR JAGADIS C. BOSE 



do not yet see my way clearly, but I shall take it up time 

 after time, if only to show that one man's strength and 

 resoluteness of purpose can face any combination. It is 

 not for me to sit with folded hands in resignation. I do 

 not believe in miracles : but the miracle shall happen this 

 time ; for I know that I am fighting for the establishment 

 of truth.' 



On the day after his paper (February 21, 1902) he 

 writes again : ' Victory ! I stood there alone, ready 

 for hosts of opponents, but in fifteen minutes the hall 

 was resounding with applause. After the paper, Prof. 

 Howes told me that as he saw each experiment, 

 he tried to get out of it by thinking of a loophole of 

 explanation : but my next experiment closed that hole.' 

 All had gone well ; the speakers afterwards were glowing 

 in their congratulations, in fact almost to ovation. The 

 President wrote to him : 



It seems to me that your experiments make it clear beyond 

 doubt that all parts of plants not merely those which are known 

 to be motile are irritable, and manifest their irritability by an 

 electrical response to stimulation. This is an important step 

 in advance, and will, I hope, be the starting point for further 

 researches to elucidate what is the nature of the molecular 

 condition which constitutes irritability, and the nature of the 

 molecular change induced by a stimulus. This would doubt- 

 less lead to some important generalisation as to the properties 

 of matter ; not only living matter, but non-living matter as 

 well. 



The disaster of the previous year thus seemed com- 

 pletely retrieved ; and the paper, with full illustrations of 

 apparatus, went for publication. But now came a new 

 surprise not less sudden than had been the previous one, 

 and even more painful. For any active scientific mind, 

 confident of its new results, may brace itself up to 

 maintain them, like the theologian of old, against the 

 world. To be told that one's results are not credible, and 

 then to prove them, is thus a triumph for scientific 



