The untaught peasant beheld the elements around him and was acquainted
with their practical uses. The most learned philosopher knew little
more. He had partially unveiled the face of Nature, but her immortal
lineaments were still a wonder and a mystery. He might dissect,
anatomise, and give names; but, not to speak of a final cause, causes
in their secondary and tertiary grades were utterly unknown to him. I
had gazed upon the fortifications and impediments that seemed to keep
human beings from entering the citadel of nature, and rashly and
ignorantly I had repined.
But here were books, and here were men who had penetrated deeper and knew
more. I took their word for all that they averred, and I became their
disciple. It may appear strange that such should arise in the eighteenth
century; but while I followed the routine of education in the schools of
Geneva, I was, to a great degree, self-taught with regard to my favourite
studies. My father was not scientific, and I was left to struggle with a
child s blindness, added to a student s thirst for knowledge.
Under the guidance of my new preceptors I entered with the greatest
diligence into the search of the philosopher s stone and the elixir
of life; but the latter soon obtained my undivided attention. Wealth was an
inferior object, but what glory would attend the discovery if I could
banish disease from the human frame and render man invulnerable to any but
a violent death!
Nor were these my only visions. The raising of ghosts or devils was a
promise liberally accorded by my favourite authors, the fulfilment of which
I most eagerly sought; and if my incantations were always unsuccessful, I
attributed the failure rather to my own inexperience and mistake than to a
want of skill or fidelity in my instructors. And thus for a time I was
occupied by exploded systems, mingling, like an unadept, a thousand
contradictory theories and floundering desperately in a very slough of
multifarious knowledge, guided by an ardent imagination and childish
reasoning, till an accident again changed the current of my ideas.
When I was about fifteen years old we had retired to our house near
Belrive, when we witnessed a most violent and terrible thunderstorm. It
advanced from behind the mountains of Jura, and the thunder burst at once
with frightful loudness from various quarters of the heavens. I remained,
while the storm lasted, watching its progress with curiosity and delight.
As I stood at the door, on a sudden I beheld a stream of fire issue from an
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