The Intellectual Life

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 edition. Excerpt: ... LETTER n TO A FRIEND WHO MAINTAINED THAT SURROUNDINGS WERE A MATTER OF INDIFFERENCE TO A THOROUGHLY OCCUPIED MIND Archimedes at the siege of Syracuse -- Geoffroy St. Hilaire in the besieged city of Alexandria -- Goethe at the bombardment of Verdun -- Lullo, the Oriental missionary -- Giordano Bruno -- Unacknowledged effect of surroundings -- Effect of Frankfort on Goethe -- Great capitals -- Goethe -- His garden-house -- What he said about Beranger and Paris -- Fortunate surroundings of Titian. There are so many well-known instances of men who have been able to continue their intellectual labours under the most unfavourable conditions, that your argument might be powerfully supported by an appeal to actual experience. There is Archimedes, of course, to begin with, who certainly seems to have abstracted himself sufficiently from the tumult of a great siege to forget it altogether when occupied with his mathematical problems. The prevalent stories of his death, though not identical, point evidently to a habit of abstraction which had been remarked as a peculiarity by those about him, and it is probable enough that a great inventor in engineering would follow his usual speculations under circumstances which, though dangerous, had lasted long enough to become habitual. Even modern warfare, which from the use of gunpowder is so much noisier than that which raged at Syracuse, does not hinder men from thinking and writing when they are used to it. Geoffroy St. Hilaire never worked more steadily and regularly in his whole life than he did in the midst of the besieged city of Alexandria. "Knowledge is so sweet," he said long afterwards, in speaking of this experience, "that it never entered my thoughts how a bombshell might in an instant have...