At that time I disliked public speaking, and had a firm conviction that
I should break down every time I opened my mouth. I believe I had every
fault a speaker could have (except talking at random or indulging
in rhetoric), when I spoke to the first important audience I ever
addressed, on a Friday evening at the Royal Institution, in 1852. Yet,
I must confess to having been guilty, malgre moi, of as much public
speaking as most of my contemporaries, and for the last ten years it
ceased to be so much of a bugbear to me. I used to pity myself for
having to go through this training, but I am now more disposed to
compassionate the unfortunate audiences, especially my ever friendly
hearers at the Royal Institution, who were the subjects of my oratorical
experiments.
The last thing that it would be proper for me to do would be to speak of
the work of my life, or to say at the end of the day whether I think
I have earned my wages or not. Men are said to be partial judges
of themselves. Young men may be, I doubt if old men are. Life seems
terribly foreshortened as they look back and the mountain they set
themselves to climb in youth turns out to be a mere spur of immeasurably
higher ranges when, by failing breath, they reach the top. But if I may
speak of the objects I have had more or less definitely in view since I
began the ascent of my hillock, they are briefly these: To promote
the increase of natural knowledge and to forward the application of
scientific methods of investigation to all the problems of life to the
best of my ability, in the conviction which has grown with my growth
and strengthened with my strength, that there is no alleviation for the
sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the
resolute facing of the world as it is when the garment of make-believe
by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features is stripped off.
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