I returned home, not disappointed, for I have said that I had
long considered those authors useless whom the professor
reprobated; but I returned, not at all the more inclined to
recur to these studies in any shape. M. Krempe was a little
squat man, with a gruff voice and a repulsive countenance; the
teacher, therefore, did not prepossess me in favour of his
pursuits. In rather a too philosophical and connected a strain,
perhaps, I have given an account of the conclusions I had come
to concerning them in my early years. As a child, I had not been
content with the results promised by the modern professors of
natural science. With a confusion of ideas only to be accounted
for by my extreme youth, and my want of a guide on such matters,
I had retrod the steps of knowledge along the paths of time, and
exchanged the discoveries of recent enquirers for the dreams of
forgotten alchymists. Besides, I had a contempt for the uses of
modern natural philosophy. It was very different, when the
masters of the science sought immortality and power; such views,
although futile, were grand: but now the scene was changed. The
ambition of the inquirer seemed to limit itself to the
annihilation of those visions on which my interest in science
was chiefly founded. I was required to exchange chimeras of
boundless grandeur for realities of little worth.
Such were my reflections during the first two or three days of
my residence at Ingolstadt, which were chiefly spent in becoming
acquainted with the localities, and the principal residents in
my new abode. But as the ensuing week commenced, I thought of
the information which M. Krempe had given me concerning the
lectures. And although I could not consent to go and hear that
little conceited fellow deliver sentences out of a pulpit, I
recollected what he had said of M. Waldman, whom I had never
seen, as he had hitherto been out of town.