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Babbage, Charles - Expositions
Identifier
004051
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Babbage wrote a book called Expositions, which is generally regarded as more emotionally revealing than his autobiographical works such as Passages from the Life of a Philosopher published 13 years later.
In Expositions he wrote about loneliness and isolation, the humiliation he felt as a consequence of his dispute with Airy described by one source as 'an act which meant he had shot himself in the foot and made himself an object of ridicule', and the despair to which his efforts, personal sacrifices and lack of recognisition had at times reduced him. But in this same book is an indication that he did indeed have 'help'.
A description of the experience
Expositions
When driven by exhausted means and injured health almost to despair of the achievements of his life's great object - when the brain itself reels beneath the weight its own ambition has imposed, and the world's neglect aggravates the throbbings of an overtasked frame, an angel spirit sits beside his couch ministering with gentlest skill to every wish, watching with anxious thought till renovated nature shall admit bolder counsels, then points the way to hope, herself the guardian of his deathless frame.