When quite young I can remember I had no thought or wish of surpassing others. I was rather taken with a liking of little arts and bits of learning. My mother carefully fostered a liking for botany, giving me a small microscope and many books, which I yet have. Strange as it may seem, I now believe that botany and the natural system, by exercising discrimination of kinds, is the best of logical exercises. What I may do in logic is perhaps derived from that early attention to botany.
William Stanley Jevons's reflections on his earlier life, written when he was 27 (December 1862); later published in "Letters and Journal of W. Stanley Jevons" edited by Harriet A. Jevons, his wife (p. 11), 1886.
