40 JAMES CLEHK MAXWELL 



embodiment of the work of Eternity. The foundations of 

 his confidence are unchangeable, for he has been made a 

 partaker of Infinity. He strenuously works out his daily 

 enterprises because the present is given him for a iosse.sHion. 



"Thus ought Man to bo an impersonation of the divine 

 process of nature, and to show forth the union of the infinite 

 with the finite, not slighting his temporal existence, remem- 

 bering that in it only is individual action possible; nor yet 

 shutting out from his view that whu-h is eternal, knowing that 

 Time is a mystery which man cannot endure to contemplate 

 until eternal Truth enlighten it/ 1 



His lather was unwell in the Christmas vacation 

 of that year, and he could not return to Cambridge at 

 the beginning of the Lent term. " My steps," he 

 writes* to C. J. Munro from Edinburgh, February UHh, 

 1855, "will be no more by the reedy and crooked, 

 till Easter term. ... I should like to know bow- 

 many kept bacalaurean weeks go to each of these 

 terms, and when they begin and end. Overhaul the 

 Calendar, and when found make note of." 



He was back in Cambridge for the May term, 

 working at the motion of fluids and at his colour-top. 

 A paper on " Experiments on Colour as Perceived by 

 the Eye " was communicated to the Royal Society of 

 Edinburgh on March 19th, 1855. The experiments 

 were shown to the Cambridge Philosophical Society 

 in May following, and the results arc thus described 

 in two letters!, to his father, Saturday, May 5th, 1855 : 



44 The Royal Society have been very considerate in sending 

 me my paper on * Colours' just when I wanted it for the 

 Philosophical here. I am to let them see the tricks on Monday 



Lift- of J. C. Muxwt-11," u. '210. 

 t ' Life of J. C. Maxwell," p. 211. 





