DISORDERED EYES, 347 



About this time I quitted the univerfity, and paffed 

 the winters in Berlin, and the fummers on a little eilate 

 near that city. My attachment to philofophy was in- 

 creafed in the familiar intercourfe with fome of the 

 moft celebrated philofophers of this place ; and the 

 firft philofophical performance I ventured to give to the 

 public, was meditated in the evenings in a dark room, 

 and committed to paper from three to fix every morn- 

 ing ; for my time during the day was fo much taken 

 .up with the proper labours of my vocation, that I had 

 no leifure to purfue my own itudies. 



This continued application early in the morning by 

 candle-light gave the laft ftroke to the life of my eyes ; 

 which was before .exerted with fuch fenfible pain. And 

 now began a period of my life that lafled for four 

 years; which I can never call to mind without horror, 

 though at the fame time not without calling a grateful 

 Jook towards heaven. 



For now the nerves of my inceiTantly inflamed eyes, 

 were become fo irritable, that it was almofl impoffible 

 for me to endure being in a room that was but mode- 

 rately enlightened. Thus was I reduced to the fad ne- 

 ceffity of palling the long winter-evenings in a dark 

 room, without fociety and without employment. The 

 horror of my then fituation I think I have no need to 

 defcribe. Every reader will in (bine rheafure form a 

 conception of it, by reprefenting to himfelf what a 

 young man of twenty-four, who, from his other wife 

 healthy frame of body had no probable hope of an ap - 



3 



preaching death, had to iuffer, while, day after day, 

 from four in the afternoon till nine or ten at night, he 

 .was fitting in a corner of his dark apartment, with- 

 6 put 



