1838 EARLY PURSUITS 7 



with pleasure his visits to the man of six-and-twenty, with 

 whom he could talk freely of the books he read, and the 

 ideas he gathered about philosophy. 



Afterwards, however, their ways lay far apart, and I 

 believe they did not meet again until the seventies, when 

 Mr. May sent his children to be educated in London, and 

 his youngest son was at school with me ; his younger 

 daughter studied art at the Slade School with my sisters, 

 and both found a warm welcome in the home circle at 

 Marlborough Place. 



One of his boyish speculations was as to what would 

 become of things if their qualities were taken away ; and 

 lighting upon Sir William Hamilton's Logic, he devoured it 

 to such good effect that when, years afterwards, he came to 

 tackle the greater philosophers, especially the English and 

 the German, he found he had already a clear notion of where 

 the key of metaphysic lay. 



This early interest in metaphysics was another form of 

 the intense curiosity to discover the motive principle of 

 things, the why and how they act, that appeared in the 

 boy's love of engineering and of anatomy. The unity of 

 this motive and the accident which bade fair to ruin his life 

 at the outset, and actually levied a lifelong tax upon his 

 bodily vigour, are best told in his own words : — 



As I grew older, my great desire was to be a mechanical 

 engineer, but the fates were against this^ and while very young I 

 commenced the study of medicine under a medical brother-in- 

 law. But, though the Institute of Mechanical Engineers would 

 certainly not own me, I am not sure that I have not all along 

 been a sort of mechanical engineer in partibus infidelium. I am 

 now occasionally horrified to think how little I ever knew or 

 cared about medicine as the art of healing. The only part of 

 my professional course which really and deeply interested me 

 was physiology, which is the mechanical engineering of living 

 machines ; and, notwithstanding that natural science has been 

 my proper business, I am afraid there is very little of the genu- 

 ine naturailist in me, I never collected anything, and species 

 work was always a burden to me ; what I cared for was the 

 architectural and engineering part of the business, the working 

 out the wonderful unity of plan in the thousands and thousands 

 2 



