298 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. [CHAP. X. 



Lavater and his life. He needed to know people ; he was 

 a man of a refined and tender spirit, but it was vigorous, 

 although not very massive or powerful, and he came to know 

 people, made friends, a few enemies, stuck to his work, and 

 lived happy. Other men have lived well and done good 

 without even wishing to burst the shell of separate existence, 

 feeling it like the natural garment of a personal being. 



Now I find that the transfusive tendency is not identical 

 with personal attraction (using the last two words in any- 

 thing but their newspaper sense). There are some people 

 whom I feel disposed to love, honour, and obey, though in 

 many things I may dislike them, and may have no wish to 

 have a complete fusion of thought and feeling, with them. 

 There are others who are easily sympathised with, and open 

 out willingly, but do not thereby acquire the power and 

 authority which the first have without seeking it. Both is 

 best, but of the two the first is more permanent than the 

 second. 



To return to the book, the different sex of the parties is 

 treated as an accident, but by the effect on the man it 

 certainly is not, neither is the effect of it insensible on the 

 lady. She treats his statements with more reverence than 

 is their due, as coming from a man, and, I think, fails 

 entirely in framing a scheme for coalescing, without entering 

 on that state of which marriage is the symbol, even though 

 by accident there may be checks which may enable or com- 

 pel the parties to stop short. It is not society that does it ; 

 it is a law in us. Now I must stop, or I shall be teaching 

 my grandmother to suck eggs. 



Let me try my hand on that worthy relative in her 

 professional as well as private capacity, with respect to the 

 Lilleshall sermon. I am sure you will be able, with pains, 

 to put anything you have sure hold of before your hearers ; 

 but there are certain subjects which, after being handled by 

 some of our writers, get coated over with language so 

 tenacious that it is difficult to recognise them in plain 

 clothes, so that you become like the " lovely song of one 

 that hath a pleasant voice." 



