Frankenstein Chapter 2, Excerpt By Mary Shelley
Victor Frankenstein recounts the influences that lead to his great experiment:
When I returned home my first care was to procure the whole works of this author, and
afterwards of Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus. I read and studied the wild fancies of
these writers with delight; they appeared to me treasures known to few besides myself. I
have described myself as always having been imbued with a fervent longing to penetrate
the secrets of nature. In spite of the intense labour and wonderful discoveries of modern
philosophers, I always came from my studies discontented and unsatisfied. Sir Isaac
Newton is said to have avowed that he felt like a child picking up shells beside the
great and unexplored ocean of truth. Those of his successors in each branch of natural
philosophy with whom I was acquainted appeared even to my boy's apprehensions as
tyros engaged in the same pursuit.
Under the guidance of my new preceptors I entered with the greatest diligence into the
search of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life; but the latter soon obtained my
undivided attention. Wealth was an inferior object, but what glory would attend the
discovery if I could banish disease from the human frame and render man invulnerable to
any but a violent death!
Read this excerpt from the text:
I always came from my studies discontented and unsatisfied. Sir Isaac Newton is said to have
avowed that he felt like a child picking up shells beside the great and unexplored ocean of
truth