Chapter 2
We were brought up together; there was not quite a year difference
in our ages. I need not say that we were strangers to any species
of disunion or dispute. Harmony was the soul of our companionship,
and the diversity and contrast that subsisted in our characters drew
us nearer together. Elizabeth was of a calmer and more concentrated
disposition; but, with all my ardour, I was capable of a more intense
application and was more deeply smitten with the thirst for knowledge.
She busied herself with following the aerial creations of the poets;
and in the majestic and wondrous scenes which surrounded our Swiss home
--the sublime shapes of the mountains, the changes of the seasons,
tempest and calm, the silence of winter, and the life and turbulence
of our Alpine summers--she found ample scope for admiration and delight.
While my companion contemplated with a serious and satisfied spirit
the magnificent appearances of things, I delighted in investigating
their causes. The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine.
Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature,
gladness akin to rapture, as they were unfolded to me, are among
the earliest sensations I can remember.
On the birth of a second son, my junior by seven years,
my parents gave up entirely their wandering life and fixed
themselves in their native country. We possessed a house in
Geneva, and a campagne on Belrive, the eastern shore of the lake,
at the distance of rather more than a league from the city.
We resided principally in the latter, and the lives of my parents
were passed in considerable seclusion. It was my temper to avoid a
crowd and to attach myself fervently to a few. I was indifferent,
therefore, to my school-fellows in general; but I united myself
in the bonds of the closest friendship to one among them.
Henry Clerval was the son of a merchant of Geneva. He was
a boy of singular talent and fancy. He loved enterprise,
hardship, and even danger for its own sake. He was deeply
read in books of chivalry and romance. He composed heroic songs
and began to write many a tale of enchantment and knightly adventure.
He tried to make us act plays and to enter into masquerades, in which
the characters were drawn from the heroes of Roncesvalles, of the
Round Table of King Arthur, and the chivalrous train who shed their
blood to redeem the holy sepulchre from the hands of the infidels.
No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself.
My parents were possessed by the very spirit of kindness and indulgence.
We felt that they were not the tyrants to rule our lot according to
their caprice, but the agents and creators of all the many delights
which we enjoyed. When I mingled with other families I distinctly
discerned how peculiarly fortunate my lot was, and gratitude assisted
the development of filial love.
My temper was sometimes violent, and my passions vehement; but by
some law in my temperature they were turned not towards childish
pursuits but to an eager desire to learn, and not to learn all
things indiscriminately. I confess that neither the structure of
languages, nor the code of governments, nor the politics of various
states possessed attractions for me. It was the secrets of heaven
and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward
substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious
soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed
to the metaphysical, or in it highest sense, the physical secrets
of the world.
Meanwhile Clerval occupied himself, so to speak, with the moral
relations of things. The busy stage of life, the virtues of heroes,
and the actions of men were his theme; and his hope and his dream was
to become one among those whose names are recorded in story as the
gallant and adventurous benefactors of our species. The saintly soul
of Elizabeth shone like a shrine-dedicated lamp in our peaceful home.
Her sympathy was ours; her smile, her soft voice, the sweet glance
of her celestial eyes, were ever there to bless and animate us.
She was the living spirit of love to soften and attract; I might
have become sullen in my study, through the ardour of my nature,
but that she was there to subdue me to a semblance of her own gentleness.
And Clerval--could aught ill entrench on the noble spirit of Clerval?
Yet he might not have been so perfectly humane, so thoughtful in
his generosity, so full of kindness and tenderness amidst his
passion for adventurous exploit, had she not unfolded to him the
real loveliness of beneficence and made the doing good the end and aim
of his soaring ambition.
I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood,
before misfortune had tainted my mind and changed its bright visions of
extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self.
Besides, in drawing the picture of my early days, I also record
those events which led, by insensible steps, to my after tale of misery,
for when I would account to myself for the birth of that passion which
afterwards ruled my destiny I find it arise, like a mountain river,
from ignoble and almost forgotten sources; but, swelling as it proceeded,
it became the torrent which, in its course, has swept away all my hopes
and joys. Natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate;
I desire, therefore, in this narration, to state those facts which
led to my predilection for that science. When I was thirteen years
of age we all went on a party of pleasure to the baths near Thonon;
the inclemency of the weather obliged us to remain a day confined
to the inn. In this house I chanced to find a volume of the works
of Cornelius Agrippa. I opened it with apathy; the theory which he
attempts to demonstrate and the wonderful facts which he relates
soon changed this feeling into enthusiasm. A new light seemed to
dawn upon my mind, and bounding with joy, I communicated my
discovery to my father. My father looked carelessly at the title
page of my book and said, "Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor,
do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash."
If, instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains to
explain to me that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely
exploded and that a modern system of science had been introduced
which possessed much greater powers than the ancient, because the
powers of the latter were chimerical, while those of the former
were real and practical, under such circumstances I should certainty
have thrown Agrippa aside and have contented my imagination,
warmed as it was, by returning with greater ardour to my former studies.
It is even possible that the train of my ideas would never
have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin.
But the cursory glance my father had taken of my volume
by no means assured me that he was acquainted with its contents,
and I continued to read with the greatest avidity. When I returned home
my first care was to procure the whole works of this author, and
afterwards of Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus. I read and studied
the wild fancies of these writers with delight; they appeared to me
treasures known to few besides myself. I have described myself as
always having been imbued with a fervent longing to penetrate the
secrets of nature. In spite of the intense labour and wonderful
discoveries of modern philosophers, I always came from my studies
discontented and unsatisfied. Sir Isaac Newton is said to have
avowed that he felt like a child picking up shells beside the great
and unexplored ocean of truth. Those of his successors in each
branch of natural philosophy with whom I was acquainted appeared
even to my boy's apprehensions as tyros engaged in the same pursuit.
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, anatomize, 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 fulfillment 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 old and beautiful oak which
stood about twenty yards from our house; and so soon as the
dazzling light vanished, the oak had disappeared, and nothing
remained but a blasted stump. When we visited it the next
morning, we found the tree shattered in a singular manner.
It was not splintered by the shock, but entirely reduced to thin
ribbons of wood. I never beheld anything so utterly destroyed.
Before this I was not unacquainted with the more obvious laws of electricity.
On this occasion a man of great research in natural philosophy was with us,
and excited by this catastrophe, he entered on the explanation of a theory
which he had formed on the subject of electricity and galvanism, which was
at once new and astonishing to me. All that he said threw greatly into
the shade Cornelius Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus, the lords
of my imagination; but by some fatality the overthrow of these men
disinclined me to pursue my accustomed studies. It seemed to me as
if nothing would or could ever be known. All that had so long engaged
my attention suddenly grew despicable. By one of those caprices
of the mind which we are perhaps most subject to in early youth,
I at once gave up my former occupations, set down natural history
and all its progeny as a deformed and abortive creation, and entertained
the greatest disdain for a would-be science which could never even step
within the threshold of real knowledge. In this mood of mind I betook
myself to the mathematics and the branches of study appertaining to
that science as being built upon secure foundations, and so worthy
of my consideration.
Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by such slight
ligaments are we bound to prosperity or ruin. When I look back,
it seems to me as if this almost miraculous change of inclination
and will was the immediate suggestion of the guardian angel of my life
--the last effort made by the spirit of preservation to avert the
storm that was even then hanging in the stars and ready to envelop me.
Her victory was announced by an unusual tranquillity and gladness
of soul which followed the relinquishing of my ancient and latterly
tormenting studies. It was thus that I was to be taught to associate
evil with their prosecution, happiness with their disregard.
It was a strong effort of the spirit of good, but it was ineffectual.
Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter
and terrible destruction.
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