Science or Success.

107

the power of distinguishing myself, and making myself of value. But then the question is, work at what? at science, or at getting patients? The two won't go together. Even the most eminent men in the profession agree as to that. Sir Benjamin Brodie said a short time ago that he never in his life touched science' without losing by it."

CHAPTER VI.

IN 1852 Mr. Hinton's marriage with Miss Margaret Haddon took place. It was a marriage of singularly deep affection; and from thenceforward his wife became the sharer in his every thought-his love for her being all through his life, from the early age of nineteen, the

one

"Ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken."

Scarcely any letters, unfortunately, have been preserved of the few following years. Externally they were uneventful enough, except for the birth of his two sons, Howard and William, in 1853 and 1854, and, in 1855, of his daughter Adaline. After the first year, Mr. Hinton had dissolved his partnership with Mr. Fisher, and was now practising for himself as a London surgeon, still steadily pursuing his study of aural surgery, and in his leisure moments occupying himself with arranging and classifying Mr. Toynbee's anatomical museum in connection with the ear. In 1854-55 he gave a course of lectures on Sound, having been led to the study of vibrations in relation to the organs of hearing.

In the latter year he wrote to Mrs. Hinton to announce his father having met with a bad accident.

ce

Accident to his Father.

109

"May 16, 1855

“I have sad news to tell you: our dear father fell down the pulpit-stairs at Cheltenham and broke his arm —his left arm, happily. I enclose you mother's letter. You will see he is progressing favourably. I remember how, when your poor father fell down and injured himself, you felt so vividly how very, very dear he was to you; and this accident brings the same feeling to my mind. What a loss his death would be to us, and how we should miss his sweet, grave kindness! Even Howard would mourn for him, would he not? But I hope there are many years of usefulness and happiness before him; only he must be content with doing less; he always exerts himself beyond his strength. Will it not be pleasant for us to wait upon and cheer the old people if they should be spared so long, when they are quite laid aside from active life, and only able to sit and meditate by their fireside? I delight to think of my old father so; I think he will make a glorious old man.

I

"I am glad to have such a good account of the children. It must be glorious for Howard to be revelling so much in the open air, it is so natural and proper for a child. feel almost as if we had no right to confine him to a London home unless we are absolutely obliged-that is why I am so willing for you to remain away; for I am sure you feel with me that our comfort and enjoyment are as nothing compared with the securing a healthy, happy, and powerful life for our children. Do you not see, as you watch his little soul expanding beneath the sun, and amid all the beauties of nature, that he cannot attain the full stature of his manhood cooped up here? You know I was a country boy, and would have fresh air and fields, and all the sweet influences of natural scenery for my children."

"Indeed I cannot come to Dover.

66

"May 1855.

I cannot go out of

town this year. I must attend more closely to business. ... I give my enjoyment to the children, and enjoy it so much more. A man must not expect to be able to bring up a family and to spend money upon himself as well; that is not in reason; the less may well be sacrificed to the greater."

At this period he was in constant intercourse with Sir William (then Dr.) Gull, who remained his valued friend through life. Being both hardworked professional men, they were in the habit of taking their English constitutional together from six to eight in the morning, wending their way, deep in discussion, through the comparatively deserted London streets out into the suburbs or parks, while the air still retained some of the freshness of the morning dew; and returning homeward as the earliest housemaids were cleaning their door-steps, and here and there a window was beginning to open its shuttered lids and show some signs of waking life. On one occasion, being asked whether he had seen Mr. Hinton lately, Sir William Gull, in allusion to some of his speculative flights, laughingly replied, pointing to the top of the highest building in sight, "Hinton! He was up there when I last saw him; he must be out of sight by now!"

Uneventful as these years were externally, they were years of prodigious mental activity and change, the great intellectual watershed of James Hinton's life, whence most of the ideas which constitute him an original thinker had their source.

It is of so much importance that the reader should

Letter to Professor Croom Robertson.

III

form some general idea of the method he evolved at this time, and some of the results to which it led him, that I shall venture to insert here a letter addressed by him to Professor Croom Robertson many years later, but relating to trains of thought worked out at this period.

After some preliminary remarks referring to a meeting of the Metaphysical Society, at which he had read a Paper that led to Professor Robertson asking him for a further elucidation of his views, he writes:

"I hope I may now succeed, in the space of a brief letter, in giving a glimpse both of the path I have found myself travelling on, and the sort of result which seems to me possible to be attained. Only let me premise that I know my very eagerness to be understood is a hindrance to me; for this matter is not to me (and never has been since it first arrested my thoughts) a matter of mere intellectual speculation, but has always seemed to me identified with the greatest and most pressing interests of men, to contain, indeed, the secret-not perhaps of any interests of man in a future state-but certainly of the true ordering of his life here. I dare say that you noticed this in the last paragraph of my paper.

"I think that the question of the possibility or impossibility of philosophy (taking that term to mean a penetration to practical purposes deeper than what we now term phenomena) has been essentially altered by the existence of science. A necessary step in the interpretation of the phenomenal into terms more true than those of phenomena, must be knowledge of the phenomenal itself, which before science man had not. I should, therefore (since I find people insist on treating the question à priori, a mode I think unsuitable-I mean unsuitable to the settlement of the question whether we can