i85i POSITION IN THE WORLD OF SCIENCE 



75 



chooses not a life of poverty, but, so far as I can see, a life of 

 nothing, and the art of living upon nothing at all has yet to be 

 discovered. You will naturally think, then, " Why persevere 

 in so hopeless a course ? " At present I cannot help myself. For 

 my own credit, for the sake of gratifying those who have hith- 

 erto helped me on — nay, for the sake of truth and science itself, 

 I must work out fairly and fully complete what I have begun. 

 And when that is done, I will courageously and cheerfully turn 

 my back upon all my old aspirations. The world is wide, and 

 there is everywhere room for honesty of purpose and earnest^ 

 endeavour. Had I failed in attaining my wishes from an over- 

 weening self-confidence, — had I found that the obstacles after 

 all lay within myself— .-I should have bitterly despised myself, 

 and, worst of all, I should have felt that you had just ground 

 of complaint. 



So far as the acknowledgment of the value of what I have 

 done is concerned, I have succeeded beyond my expectations, 

 and if I have failed on the other side of the question, I cannot 

 blame myself. It is the world's fault and not mine. 



A few months more, and he was able to report another 

 and still more unexpected testimony to the value of his 

 work — another encouragement to persevere in the difficult 

 pursuit of a scientific life. He found himself treated as an 

 equal by men of established reputation ; and the first-fruits 

 of his work ranked on a level with the maturer efforts of 

 veterans in science. He was within an ace of receiving the 

 Royal Medal, which was awarded him the following year. 

 Of this, he writes : — 



November 7, 1851. — I have at last tasted what it is to mingle 

 with my fellows — to take my place in that society for which 

 nature has fitted me, and whether the draught has been a poison 

 which has heated my veins or true nectar from the gods, life- 

 giving, I know not, but I can no longer rest where I once could 

 have rested. If I could find within myself that mere personal 

 ambition, the desire of fame, present or posthumous, had any- 

 thing to do with this restlessness, I would root it out. But in 

 those moments of self-questioning, when one does not lie even 

 to oneself, I feel that I can say it is not so — that the real pleas- 

 ure, the true sphere, lies in the feeling of self-development — in 

 the sense of power and of growing oneness with the great spirit 

 of abstract truth. 



