human
When between thirteen and fourteen years of age, he read through the twenty folio volumes of D'Alembert and Diderot's Encyclopaedia, digested its contents wonderfully for a boy and could long afterwards repeat extracts from it. But his reading was not confined to such books. A biography of Descartes, indeed, by Thomas, inspired him with his earliest enthusiasm for mathematics and natural philosophy; but his first communion also left an indelible stamp on his memory and character. The love of religion then, once {655} and for ever, took possession of his soul, and fired him through life, like the electric currents into which he made such profound research. When his days, which were fall of trouble, came to a close at Marseilles in 1837, he told the chaplain of the college that he had discharged all his Christian duties before setting out on his journey; and when a friend began reading to him some sentences from
gpt
The Imitation of Christ, he said,
human
I know the book by heart.
gpt
De Rerum Naturâ