To return to his early development. There is extant a fragmentary little journal of his, begun when he was fifteen, and kept irregularly for a couple of years. Here the early bent of his mind is clearly revealed; it prefigures the leading characteristics of his mature intellect. He jots down any striking thought or saying he comes across in the course of his reading; he makes practical experiments to test his theories; above all, his insatiable curiosity to find out the "why" and "how" of things makes him speculate on their causes, and discuss with his friends the right and wrong of existing institutions.
This curiosity to make out how things work is common to most healthy boys; to probe deep into the reasoned "why" is rare. It makes the practical mechanic into the man of science. Possessing both these qualities as he did, it is easy to understand his own description of his early ambitions:—
As I grew older, my great desire was to be a mechanical engineer, but the fates were against this; and, while very young, I commenced the study of medicine under a medical brother-in-law. But, though the Institute of Mechanical Engineers would certainly not own me, I am not sure that I have not all along been a sort of mechanical engineer in partibus infidelium. I am now occasionally horrified to think how little I ever knew or cared about medicine as the art of healing. The only part of my professional course which really and deeply interested me was physiology, which is the mechanical engineering of living machines; and, notwithstanding that natural science has been my proper business, I am afraid there is very little of the genuine naturalist in me. I never collected anything, and species work was always a burden to me; what I cared for was the architectural and engineering part of the business, the working out the wonderful unity of plan in the thousands and thousands of diverse living constructions, and the modifications of similar apparatuses to serve diverse ends.
One or two typical extracts may be given from the Journal, which opens with a quotation from Novalis: "Philosophy can bake no bread; but it can prove for us God, freedom, and immortality. Which, now, is more practical, Philosophy or Economy?" Later comes a quotation from Lessing, which involved a cardinal principle that he claimed for himself, and demanded of his pupils: accept no authority without verifying it for yourself:—
I hate all people who want to found sects. It is not error, but sects—it is not error, but sectarian error, nay, and even sectarian truth, which causes the unhappiness of mankind.
Electricity interests him specially; among other experiments, while theorizing upon them, he makes a galvanic battery "in view of experiment to get crystallized carbon: got it deposited, but not crystallized."
He is a young Radical in his opposition to anything like injustice, though frankly admitting that youth is not infallible. One of his boyish speculations was as to what would become of things if their qualities were taken away. While on this quest, he got hold of Sir William Hamilton's Logic, and read it to such good effect that when, years afterwards, he sat down to the greater philosophers, he found that he already had a clear notion of where the key of metaphysics lay. The following extract from the Journal shows that he already had a characteristic point of view:—
Had a long talk with my mother and father about the right to make Dissenters pay church rates, and whether there ought to be any Establishment. I maintain that there ought not in both cases—I wonder what will be my opinion ten years hence? I think now that it is against all laws of justice to force men to support a church with whose opinions they cannot conscientiously agree. The argument that the rate is so small is very fallacious. It is as much a sacrifice of principle to do a little wrong as to do a great one.
His friend, George Anderson May, with whom the boy of fifteen has "a long argument on the nature of the soul and the difference between it and matter," was then a man of six and twenty, in business at Hinckley.
I maintained that it could not be proved that matter is essentially, as to its base, different from soul. Mr. M. wittily said soul was the perspiration of matter.