Page:The Harveian oration delivered at the Royal College of Physicians June 26, 1889 (IA b22361285).pdf/5

 trials, differing in kind, ever await the man of original thought whose innate love of truth carries him irresistibly forward in its pursuit. If, on the one hand, we are to believe in the great privileges enjoyed by the discoverer, we are on the other forced to acknowledge that the gifts of a vivid imagination and of great power of analysis are in themselves causes of trouble to the possessor. How frequently this self-inflicted pain must be undergone! The suggestive fact which cannot be made to take a place—the apparent antagonism of two equally well-ascertained truths—the sudden flight of thought towards generalisation meeting encouragement, and making the heart tremble with hope, and then the godlike power of analysis striking in, and casting down the cherished offspring of fancy as a mass of error and deceit! But the busy brain must still work on; the call will still be heard, and the reverie and the disappointment recur again and again.

So suffered Newton, and, in our own time, Davy. I heard one of the intimates of the last-named philosopher observe, that on certain occasions he felt sure Davy’s mind must have failed him, had he not been tom from his pursuits by friendly