d the next to the last, was
infinitesimal, and this close proximity annoyed me. I longed for some
brilliant occasion to surpass all my contemporaries in one great
bound; an opportunity to bestow on science and humanity some unique
benefit that could never be compared with those accumulated by
lesser men. One day, revolving many things in my mind, I entered the
Bibliotheque Imperiale. Strolling idly past the grated bookcases, my
attention was attracted by the title of a thin folio, wedged in
between Lavater and Geoffroy St. Hilaire. An inexplicable impulse led
me to demand this book, the "History of Vesalius and his Times." I had
no particular reason, that I knew of, to be interested in Vesalius; I
merely followed an idle whim, suggested rather by the peculiar shape
and position of the folio, than by any solid reason; and this whim
did not hurry me out of my lounging mood. I settled myself in one of
the windows, and leisurely turned over the leaves of my book, reading
a line here and a phrase there, until I alighted and settled upon the
following passage: "So the rumor spread abroad that Vesalius had
opened the chest of a living man to see his heart beat. And upon that
the people were in a fury and the court hissed with rage, and Vesalius
was obliged to flee from Spain before the power of the Inquisition;
and some say that he then made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. But on
his return he was shipwrecked on a desolate island and perished
miserably. Hubert, in his _Vindiciae contra tyrannus_ reports this
history to the eternal shame of the Jesuits."

The world often describes with minuteness the material framework of
such noisy events as have impressed its coarse sensibilities. But it
commonly neglects, because ignoring, the scenes wherein have taken
place the crises of thought, or occurred the birth of new, indomitable
ideas. To the thinker, however, such outer scenes remain inextricably
associated with the thought that has sprung to life in their midst. To
this day I preserve a vivid recollection of every item of the place
where I read the story of Vesalius; the lofty reading-room, with its
confused lining of many-colored books, the tables crowded by eager
students, the broad, deep windows through which the sun streamed, and
from which I, sitting with open folio on my lap, watched the shifting
fountain and the swaying trees and the long, untrimmed grass in the
courtyard below. For the story seemed to have laid hold of my