A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



painful and wasting disease. This may have affected 

 his mental equilibrium, without appreciably affecting 

 his ingenuity. In his own time this condition would 

 hardly have been considered a disease ; but to-day, with 

 our advanced ideas as to mental diseases, we should be 

 more inclined to ascribe his unfortunate attitude of 

 mind to a pathological condition, rather than to any 

 manifestation of normal mentality. From this point 

 of view his mental deformity seems not unlike that of 

 Cavendish's, later, except that in the case of Cavendish 

 it manifested itself as an abnormal sensitiveness in- 

 stead of an abnormal irritability. 



CHRISTIAN HUYGENS 



If for nothing else, the world is indebted to the man 

 who invented the pendulum clock, Christian Huygens 

 (1629-1695), of the Hague, inventor, mathematician, 

 mechanician, astronomer, and physicist. Huygens was 

 the descendant of a noble and distinguished family, 

 his father, Sir Const an tine Huygens, being a well- 

 known poet and diplomatist. Early in life young 

 Huygens began his career in the legal profession, 

 completing his education in the juridical school at 

 Breda ; but his taste for mathematics soon led him to 

 neglect his legal studies, and his aptitude for scien- 

 tific researches was so marked that Descartes predicted 

 great things of him even while he was a mere tyro in 

 the field of scientific investigation. 



One of his first endeavors in science was to attempt 

 an improvement of the telescope. Reflecting upon 

 the process of making lenses then in vogue, young 

 Huygens and his brother Constantine attempted a 



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