d in a perilous condition of
nervous strain and excitement. Goethe at the bombardment of Verdun,
letting his mind take its own course, found that it did not occupy
itself with tragedies, or with anything suggested by what was passing
in the conflict around him, but by scientific considerations about the
phenomena of colors. He noticed, in a passing observation, the bad
effect of war upon the mind, how it makes people destructive one day and
creative the next, how it accustoms them to phases intended to excite
hope in desperate circumstances, thus producing a peculiar sort of
hypocrisy different from the priestly and courtly kind. This is the
extent of his interest in the war; but when he finds some soldiers
fishing he is attracted to the spot and profoundly occupied--not with
the soldiers, but with the optical phenomena on the water. He was never
very much moved by external events, nor did he take that intense
interest in the politics of the day which we often find in people less
studious of literature and science. Raimond Lullo, the Oriental
missionary, continued to write many volumes in the midst of the most
continual difficulties and dangers, preserving as much mental energy and
clearness as if he had been safe and tranquil in a library. Giordano
Bruno worked constantly also in the midst of political troubles and
religious persecutions, and his biographer tells us that "il desiderio
vivissimo della scienza aveva ben piu efficacia sull' animo del Bruno,
che non gli avvenimenti esterni."

These examples which have just occurred to me, and many others that it
would be easy to collect, may be taken to prove at least so much as
this, that it is possible to be absorbed in private studies when
surrounded by the most disturbing influences; but even in these cases it
would be a mistake to conclude that the surroundings had no effect
whatever. There can be no doubt that Geoffroy St. Hilaire was intensely
excited by the siege of Alexandria, though he may not have attributed
his excitement to that cause. His mind was occupied with the electrical
fishes, but his nervous system was wrought upon by the siege, and kept
in that state of tension which at the same time enabled him to get
through a gigantic piece of intellectual labor and made him incapable of
rest. Had this condition been prolonged it must have terminated either
in exhaustion or in madness. Men have often engaged in literature or
science to escape the pressure of anxie