st
opportunity, I make some pun. A broad grin comes on to a hundred and
fifty faces, the eyes shine brightly, the sound of the sea is audible
for a brief moment.... I laugh too. Their attention is refreshed, and I
can go on.

No kind of sport, no kind of game or diversion, has ever given me such
enjoyment as lecturing. Only at lectures have I been able to abandon
myself entirely to passion, and have understood that inspiration is
not an invention of the poets, but exists in real life, and I imagine
Hercules after the most piquant of his exploits felt just such
voluptuous exhaustion as I experience after every lecture.

That was in old times. Now at lectures I feel nothing but torture.
Before half an hour is over I am conscious of an overwhelming weakness
in my legs and my shoulders. I sit down in my chair, but I am not
accustomed to lecture sitting down; a minute later I get up and go on
standing, then sit down again. There is a dryness in my mouth, my voice
grows husky, my head begins to go round.... To conceal my condition
from my audience I continually drink water, cough, often blow my nose as
though I were hindered by a cold, make puns inappropriately, and in the
end break off earlier than I ought to. But above all I am ashamed.

My conscience and my intelligence tell me that the very best thing I
could do now would be to deliver a farewell lecture to the boys, to
say my last word to them, to bless them, and give up my post to a man
younger and stronger than me. But, God, be my judge, I have not manly
courage enough to act according to my conscience.

Unfortunately, I am not a philosopher and not a theologian. I know
perfectly well that I cannot live more than another six months; it might
be supposed that I ought now to be chiefly concerned with the question
of the shadowy life beyond the grave, and the visions that will visit my
slumbers in the tomb. But for some reason my soul refuses to recognize
these questions, though my mind is fully alive to their importance. Just
as twenty, thirty years ago, so now, on the threshold of death, I am
interested in nothing but science. As I yield up my last breath I shall
still believe that science is the most important, the most splendid,
the most essential thing in the life of man; that it always has been and
will be the highest manifestation of love, and that only by means of it
will man conquer himself and nature. This faith is perhaps naive and may
rest on false assumpt