Self Help by Samuel Smiles (desktop ebook reader txt) 📖

>colours. “I mix them with my brains, sir,” was his reply. It is

the same with every workman who would excel. Ferguson made

marvellous things—such as his wooden clock, that accurately

measured the hours—by means of a common penknife, a tool in

everybody’s hand; but then everybody is not a Ferguson. A pan of

water and two thermometers were the tools by which Dr. Black

discovered latent heat; and a prism, a lens, and a sheet of

pasteboard enabled Newton to unfold the composition of light and

the origin of colours. An eminent foreign savant once called upon

Dr. Wollaston, and requested to be shown over his laboratories in

which science had been enriched by so many important discoveries,

when the doctor took him into a little study, and, pointing to an

old tea-tray on the table, containing a few watch-glasses, test

papers, a small balance, and a blowpipe, said, “There is all the

laboratory that I have!”

 

Stothard learnt the art of combining colours by closely studying

butterflies’ wings: he would often say that no one knew what he

owed to these tiny insects. A burnt stick and a barn door served

Wilkie in lieu of pencil and canvas. Bewick first practised

drawing on the cottage walls of his native village, which he

covered with his sketches in chalk; and Benjamin West made his

first brushes out of the cat’s tail. Ferguson laid himself down in

the fields at night in a blanket, and made a map of the heavenly

bodies by means of a thread with small beads on it stretched

between his eye and the stars. Franklin first robbed the

thundercloud of its lightning by means of a kite made with two

cross sticks and a silk handkerchief. Watt made his first model of

the condensing steam-engine out of an old anatomist’s syringe, used

to inject the arteries previous to dissection. Gifford worked his

first problems in mathematics, when a cobbler’s apprentice, upon

small scraps of leather, which he beat smooth for the purpose;

whilst Rittenhouse, the astronomer, first calculated eclipses on

his plough handle.

 

The most ordinary occasions will furnish a man with opportunities

or suggestions for improvement, if he be but prompt to take

advantage of them. Professor Lee was attracted to the study of

Hebrew by finding a Bible in that tongue in a synagogue, while

working as a common carpenter at the repairs of the benches. He

became possessed with a desire to read the book in the original,

and, buying a cheap second-hand copy of a Hebrew grammar, he set to

work and learnt the language for himself. As Edmund Stone said to

the Duke of Argyle, in answer to his grace’s inquiry how he, a poor

gardener’s boy, had contrived to be able to read Newton’s Principia

in Latin, “One needs only to know the twenty-four letters of the

alphabet in order to learn everything else that one wishes.”

Application and perseverance, and the diligent improvement of

opportunities, will do the rest.

 

Sir Walter Scott found opportunities for self-improvement in every

pursuit, and turned even accidents to account. Thus it was in the

discharge of his functions as a writer’s apprentice that he first

visited the Highlands, and formed those friendships among the

surviving heroes of 1745 which served to lay the foundation of a

large class of his works. Later in life, when employed as

quartermaster of the Edinburgh Light Cavalry, he was accidentally

disabled by the kick of a horse, and confined for some time to his

house; but Scott was a sworn enemy to idleness, and he forthwith

set his mind to work. In three days he had composed the first

canto of ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel,’ which he shortly after

finished,—his first great original work.

 

The attention of Dr. Priestley, the discoverer of so many gases,

was accidentally drawn to the subject of chemistry through his

living in the neighbourhood of a brewery. When visiting the place

one day, he noted the peculiar appearances attending the extinction

of lighted chips in the gas floating over the fermented liquor. He

was forty years old at the time, and knew nothing of chemistry. He

consulted books to ascertain the cause, but they told him little,

for as yet nothing was known on the subject. Then he began to

experiment, with some rude apparatus of his own contrivance. The

curious results of his first experiments led to others, which in

his hands shortly became the science of pneumatic chemistry. About

the same time, Scheele was obscurely working in the same direction

in a remote Swedish village; and he discovered several new gases,

with no more effective apparatus at his command than a few

apothecaries’ phials and pigs’ bladders.

 

Sir Humphry Davy, when an apothecary’s apprentice, performed his

first experiments with instruments of the rudest description. He

extemporised the greater part of them himself, out of the motley

materials which chance threw in his way,—the pots and pans of the

kitchen, and the phials and vessels of his master’s surgery. It

happened that a French ship was wrecked off the Land’s End, and the

surgeon escaped, bearing with him his case of instruments, amongst

which was an old-fashioned glyster apparatus; this article he

presented to Davy, with whom he had become acquainted. The

apothecary’s apprentice received it with great exultation, and

forthwith employed it as a part of a pneumatic apparatus which he

contrived, afterwards using it to perform the duties of an air-pump

in one of his experiments on the nature and sources of heat.

 

In like manner Professor Faraday, Sir Humphry Davy’s scientific

successor, made his first experiments in electricity by means of an

old bottle, white he was still a working bookbinder. And it is a

curious fact that Faraday was first attracted to the study of

chemistry by hearing one of Sir Humphry Davy’s lectures on the

subject at the Royal Institution. A gentleman, who was a member,

calling one day at the shop where Faraday was employed in binding

books, found him poring over the article “Electricity” in an

Encyclopaedia placed in his hands to bind. The gentleman, having

made inquiries, found that the young bookbinder was curious about

such subjects, and gave him an order of admission to the Royal

Institution, where he attended a course of four lectures delivered

by Sir Humphry. He took notes of them, which he showed to the

lecturer, who acknowledged their scientific accuracy, and was

surprised when informed of the humble position of the reporter.

Faraday then expressed his desire to devote himself to the

prosecution of chemical studies, from which Sir Humphry at first

endeavoured to dissuade him: but the young man persisting, he was

at length taken into the Royal Institution as an assistant; and

eventually the mantle of the brilliant apothecary’s boy fell upon

the worthy shoulders of the equally brilliant bookbinder’s

apprentice.

 

The words which Davy entered in his notebook, when about twenty

years of age, working in Dr. Beddoes’ laboratory at Bristol, were

eminently characteristic of him: “I have neither riches, nor

power, nor birth to recommend me; yet if I live, I trust I shall

not be of less service to mankind and my friends, than if I had

been born with all these advantages.” Davy possessed the

capability, as Faraday does, of devoting the whole power of his

mind to the practical and experimental investigation of a subject

in all its bearings; and such a mind will rarely fail, by dint of

mere industry and patient thinking, in producing results of the

highest order. Coleridge said of Davy, “There is an energy and

elasticity in his mind, which enables him to seize on and analyze

all questions, pushing them to their legitimate consequences.

Every subject in Davy’s mind has the principle of vitality. Living

thoughts spring up like turf under his feet.” Davy, on his part,

said of Coleridge, whose abilities he greatly admired, “With the

most exalted genius, enlarged views, sensitive heart, and

enlightened mind, he will be the victim of a want of order,

precision, and regularity.”

 

The great Cuvier was a singularly accurate, careful, and

industrious observer. When a boy, he was attracted to the subject

of natural history by the sight of a volume of Buffon which

accidentally fell in his way. He at once proceeded to copy the

drawings, and to colour them after the descriptions given in the

text. While still at school, one of his teachers made him a

present of ‘Linnaeus’s System of Nature;’ and for more than ten

years this constituted his library of natural history. At eighteen

he was offered the situation of tutor in a family residing near

Fecamp, in Normandy. Living close to the sea-shore, he was brought

face to face with the wonders of marine life. Strolling along the

sands one day, he observed a stranded cuttlefish. He was attracted

by the curious object, took it home to dissect, and thus began the

study of the molluscae, in the pursuit of which he achieved so

distinguished a reputation. He had no books to refer to, excepting

only the great book of Nature which lay open before him. The study

of the novel and interesting objects which it daily presented to

his eyes made a much deeper impression on his mind than any written

or engraved descriptions could possibly have done. Three years

thus passed, during which he compared the living species of marine

animals with the fossil remains found in the neighbourhood,

dissected the specimens of marine life that came under his notice,

and, by careful observation, prepared the way for a complete reform

in the classification of the animal kingdom. About this time

Cuvier became known to the learned Abbe Teissier, who wrote to

Jussieu and other friends in Paris on the subject of the young

naturalist’s inquiries, in terms of such high commendation, that

Cuvier was requested to send some of his papers to the Society of

Natural History; and he was shortly after appointed assistant-superintendent at the Jardin des Plantes. In the letter written by

Teissier to Jussieu, introducing the young naturalist to his

notice, he said, “You remember that it was I who gave Delambre to

the Academy in another branch of science: this also will be a

Delambre.” We need scarcely add that the prediction of Teissier

was more than fulfilled.

 

It is not accident, then, that helps a man in the world so much as

purpose and persistent industry. To the feeble, the sluggish and

purposeless, the happiest accidents avail nothing,—they pass them

by, seeing no meaning in them. But it is astonishing how much can

be accomplished if we are prompt to seize and improve the

opportunities for action and effort which are constantly presenting

themselves. Watt taught himself chemistry and mechanics while

working at his trade of a mathematical-instrument maker, at the

same time that he was learning German from a Swiss dyer.

Stephenson taught himself arithmetic and mensuration while working

as an engineman during the night shifts; and when he could snatch a

few moments in the intervals allowed for meals during the day, he

worked his sums with a bit of chalk upon the sides of the colliery

waggons. Dalton’s industry was the habit of his life. He began

from his boyhood, for he taught a little village-school when he was

only about twelve years old,—keeping the school in winter, and

working upon his father’s farm in summer. He would sometimes urge

himself and companions to study by the stimulus of a bet, though

bred a Quaker; and on one occasion, by his satisfactory solution of

a problem, he won as much as enabled him to buy a winter’s store of

candles. He continued his meteorological observations until a day

or two before he died,—having made and recorded upwards of 200,000

in the course of his life.

 

With perseverance, the very odds and ends of time may