Great minds divine the thing first--they see it with their inward eye. Yet there may be danger in this, for in one's anxiety to prove what he first only imagined, small proof suffices. Thus Herschel was for many years sure that the moon had an atmosphere and was inhabited; he thought that he had seen clear through the Milky Way and discovered empty space beyond; he calculated distances, and announced how far Castor was from Pollux; he even made a guess as to how long it took for a gaseous nebula to resolve itself into a planetary system; he believed the sun was a molten mass of fire--a thing that many believed until they saw the incandescent electric lamp--and in various other ways made daring prophecies which science has not only failed to corroborate, but which we now know to be errors.
But the intensity of his nature was both his virtue and his weakness. Men who do nothing and say nothing are never ridiculous. Those who hope much, believe much, and love much, make mistakes.
Constant effort and frequent mistakes are the stepping-stones of genius.
In all, Herschel contributed sixty-seven important papers to the proceedings of the Royal Society, and in one of these, which was written in his eightieth year, he says, "My enthusiasm has occasionally led me astray, and I wish now to correct a statement which I made to you twenty-eight years ago." He then enumerates some particular statement about the height of mountains in the moon, and corrects it. Truth was more to Herschel than consistency. Indeed, the earnestness, purity of purpose, and simplicity of his mind stamp him as one of the world's great men.
At Windsor he built a two-story observatory. In the wintertime every night when the stars could be seen, was sacred. No matter how cold the weather, he stood and watched; while down below, the faithful Caroline sat and recorded the observations that he called down to her.
Caroline was his confidante, adviser, secretary, servant, friend. She had a telescope of her own, and when her brother did not need her services she swept the heavens on her own account for maverick comets. In her work she was eminently successful, and five comets at least are placed to her credit on the honor-roll by right of priority. Her discoveries were duly forwarded by her brother to the Royal Society for record.