To Thomas Archer Hirst¹

My dear Tom

Your letter² reached me this morning. You seemed to have a presentiment of your cold in Manchester. Well its a good job that you will get it over before we start. Although even did such a thing occur in Marburg I think I could nurse you out of it. I made the discovery myself 3 years ago after inhaling a quantity of sulphuric ether. As I sucked the gas into my lungs I was pondering on the connexion between mind and matter, when suddenly the full solution flashed on me. I started up clapped my hands and exclaimed ‘I have it! I have it! I would not have missed it for a thousand pounds!’ Like you unfortunately the thing escaped me. I will cram you with two large extracts from my journal Extract 1.³ ‘Beauty comes not at the noddings of the will it will not be coerced but flows freely into the open heart. I often think that it is possible to pierce this mystery, by the discipline of chaste living and mental exercise that an individual man may come to discover his exact relationship to the visible world, and a consoling knowledge this must be, for once it is fixed the guidance afterwards is sure. Human knowledge appears to me to reduce itself into the question what are laws and what are not, this once discovered, content is the consequence – I know I am to die but the fact is settled, I cannot escape it – it shall not frighten me – I feel the resistance to the attainment of this insight sometimes as palpably as a mechanical push’.

Extract No 2. entries made at Rotterdam⁴ ‘Were I doomed to a life of idleness I would shoot myself without scruple! The very occupation of writing this unorthodox sentence has been medicinal. I have been wading through the Illustrated News⁵ till my intellect has become as weak as a half drowned rat. I would sooner starve than live by writing such stuff and still this is the pabulum of thousands. I am sour I confess it, but the paper has made me so. I sat down to it in a placid benevolent mood, but I have taken too large a dose and now recoil against it. There is Angus B. Reach⁶ treating us to a dish of most delectable scum; were I at liberty I would kick the fellow into better writing. I am now pacified and look with greater calmness on the matter though still with feelings of implacable enmity; determined to accept half rations or no rations sooner than seek a living by writing such stuff’.

‘Loosed from the quay at 5 o’clock, dropped down the Maas⁷ __ at first slowly until the bar was crossed when the steam was allowed to exert its full power. Calm and beautiful, becoming still calmer as we proceeded. The sun sunk a huge red rayless orb beneath the horizon, the moon rose in the opposite heaven and brightened as the sun sank. The projection of a line from the earth to the moon traversed a field of silver glory, the light quivering and sparkling from the bosom of the trembling sea. All around this path of brightness was dim gray twilight silent as the grave. There was the earth like a gymnast twirling the moon around her like a dumb bell, while the great orb just descended twirled earth moon and planets around him. Surely some principle permeates this stuff. Who created it? What is it? The soul yearns over the mystery, retires baffled but will try again. Encompassed by such thoughts, revelation seems common place, for whoever listens with reverential ear, will not he also detect the spirit voices speaking in melody to his soul. Supernal whispers which fitly uttered would be as good and true as any revelation of them all’.

Now are you sick of the extracts – you see the ‘mechanical push’ is very like your ‘dead heavy weight’. By the Lord you will soon know me as well as I do myself and I shall be tormented with a perpetual intruder into my most private thoughts.

I am preparing a Mathematical Paper for the Philosophical Magazine.⁸ This and other matters will keep me here until Thursday perhaps. I will write to you again on Monday fixing the day on which I will meet you in London.⁹ There is a nice short article on Hesse Cassel in to day’s Illustrated News.¹⁰ Read it if you can it will show you the state of matters there. I send you a letter received from Frankland¹¹ this morning. On the whole you have got a precious bag of trash.

Your affectionate | Tyndall

RI MS JT/1/HTYP/122–123

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