Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/444

428 and the very modest applause I thought it prudent to develop.

After receiving the congratulations of my friends upon my great musical taste, I informed them how easily that reputation had been acquired. Such are the feeble bases on which many a public character rests.

During my residence with my Oxford tutor, whilst I was working by myself on mathematics, I occasionally arrived at conclusions which appeared to me to be new, but which from time to time I afterwards found were already well known. At first I was much discouraged by these disappointments, and drew from such occurrences the inference that it was hopeless for me to attempt to invent anything new. After a time I saw the fallacy of my reasoning, and then inferred that when my knowledge became much more extended I might reasonably hope to make some small additions to my favourite science.

This idea considerably influenced my course during my residence at Cambridge by directing my reading to the original papers of the great discoverers in mathematical science. I then endeavoured to trace the course of their minds in passing from the known to the unknown, and to observe whether various artifices could not be connected together by some general law. The writings of Euler were eminently instructive for this purpose. At the period of my leaving Cambridge I began to see more distinctly the object of my future pursuit.

It appeared to me that the highest exercise of human faculties consisted in the endeavour to discover those laws of thought by which man passes from the known to that which