14 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap. I 



Under the head of objective knowledge comes first Physics, 

 including the whole body of the relations of inanimate unorgan- 

 ised bodies; secondly, Physiology. Including the structure and 

 functions of animal bodies, including language and Psychology ; 

 thirdly comes History. 



One object for which I have attempted to form an arrange- 

 ment of knowledge is that I may test the amount of my own 

 acquirements. I shall form an extensive list of subjects on this 

 plan, and as I acquire any one of them I shall strike it out of the 

 list. May the list soon get black! though at present I shall 

 hardly be able, I am afraid, to spot the paper. 



(A prophecy ! a prophecy, 1845 0- 



April 1842 introduces a number of quotations from 

 Carlyle's Miscellaneous Writings, " Characteristics," some 

 clear and crisp, others sinking into Carlyle's own vein of 

 speculative mysticism, e.g. 



" In the mind as in the body the sign of health is uncon- 

 sciousness." 



" Of our thinking it is but the upper surface that we shape 

 into articulate thought; underneath the region of argument and 

 conscious discourse lies the region of meditation." 



" Genius is ever a secret to itself." 



" The healthy understanding, we should say, is neither the 

 argumentative nor the Logical, but the Intuitive, for the end of 

 understanding is not to prove and find reasons but to know and 

 believe" (!) 



" The ages of heroism are not ages of Moral Philosophy. 

 Virtue, when it is philosophised of, has become aware of itself, 

 is sickly and beginning to decline." 



At the same time more electrical experiments are re- 

 corded ; and theories are advanced with pros and cons to 

 account for the facts observed. 



The last entry was made three years later — 



Oct. 1845. — I have found singular pleasure — having acci- 

 dentally raked this Biichlein from a corner of my desk — in look- 

 ing over these scraps of notices of my past existence; an illus- 

 tration of J. Paul's saying that a man has but to write down his 

 yesterday's doings, and forthwith they appear surrounded with 

 a poetic halo. 



But after all, these are but the top skimmings of these five 



