3 o HERMANN VON HELMHOLTZ 



friends; on every walk he discovered new things they had 

 not seen. When watching the play and splashing jets of 

 a fountain at Sans Souci he heard melodies and chords in 

 the murmur which they were unable to perceive, even when 

 he drew attention to them. His duties with the squadron left 

 him much spare time, but he devoted every moment to science ; 

 his brother tells us that he made use of the midday recreation to 

 study the Fundamenta Nova Functionum Ellipticarum of Jacobi, 

 and his much-read copy still shows traces of industrious work, 

 and endeavour to render these difficult matters (with which 

 even the mathematicians were unfamiliar at that time) clear to 

 himself and applicable to physiology. 



But the family life in Potsdam reacted unfavourably, though 

 not for long, upon the relation between father and son. The 

 more the young man's thoughts, the direction of his labours, 

 and his whole scientific attitude (which was so soon to be 

 adopted by the entire world of science) took him away from 

 metaphysical speculation, the stronger and for some time the 

 more irreconcilable became the contrast with the wholly specu- 

 lative philosophy of his father. While Ferdinand Helmholtz 

 admitted only the deductive method in science, and held in- 

 ductive reasoning to be inimical to it, Hermann on the contrary 

 bore the latter upon his shield, proclaiming it to the end of his 

 life the salvation of science in general and not merely of the 

 physical sciences. The father (secure in the consciousness 

 that he must be the better able as a philosopher to appreciate 

 the relation in which man stands to experience, and with the 

 best intentions in the world of directing his son, his 'dearest 

 treasure ', into the right paths of scientific discovery) missed 

 no opportunity in their daily intercourse of bringing his general 

 philosophical convictions and metaphysical conceptions to bear 

 upon the young man, doing all he could to shake him in his 

 methods of thought and experiment. 



Helmholtz, who was already concentrating himself upon the 

 experimental evidence that was to establish his world-famed 

 Law of the Conservation of Energy, saw that no agreement 

 in scientific investigation and method was possible upon such 

 divergent grounds, and that it was wiser not to discuss his 

 work with his father. The old man naturally felt this keenly, 

 but at least it kept their domestic relations in good train, and 



