making--of seeing research from the inside--his giving me the
delight of knowing that I had added a minute fragment to the great raging
flood of publications which marks the progress of knowledge--all this was
a potent factor in my education in the wider sense. That is, it did not
merely teach me certain facts, but woke in me the desire to work at
science for its own sake. My father finally gave me the necessary
opportunity by taking me as his assistant.

No one should ever be able to finish the history of his own education,
because it is co-extensive with his life. In my father's autobiography
written shortly before his death, he attempts to sum up the effect of
this self-education on himself, both as concerns his experimental
research and also in regard to the literary part of his work. An
instance of his modest estimate of his own mental progress, is so
characteristic that I shall venture to quote it. "I think that I have
become a little more skilful in guessing right explanations and in
devising experimental tests; but this may probably be the result of mere
practice, and of a larger store of knowledge. I have as much difficulty
as ever in expressing myself clearly and concisely; and this difficulty
has caused me a very great loss of time; but it has had the compensating
advantage of forcing me to think long and intently about every sentence,
and thus I have been led to see errors in reasoning and in my own
observations or those of others." I repeat that self-education is an
endless task. To some men this is a comforting, to others a depressing,
fact. Samuel Johnson was, I think, saddened by the making of fresh plans
of conduct for each new year. A very different man, though also a
Samuel,--Butler, the author of _Erewhon_, was cheered by the thought that
it was always possible to improve. When I knew him he was working as a
painter in an untidy room in Clifford's Inn, without much furniture
except a piano. He was poor, and therefore, to save models, painted
himself over and over again, the result being a cupboard full of grim
heads, which he called the chamber of horrors. He always believed he
should succeed at last, and the point I am slowly reaching is that he
comforted himself with the belief that John Bellini entirely altered his
style when he was between 60 and 70 years of age. One of the French
aphorism writers, Vauvenargues, has said (as translated by Lord Morley),
"To do great things a man must