"He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts" - Samuel Johnson.
The pursuit of knowledge may often leave a negative effect on one who abuses it. One may achieve pride through worthless acts of knowledge and in the end be unsatisfied. However, those who cope with their pride will lift their heart, by putting their knowledge to use where it is needed. Victor Frankenstein's onward cadence towards perfecting a creature to which he believed would excel human characteristics, caused destruction upon his heart, abandoned all opportunity, and forced him to withdraw from reality.
While escaping his prior occupations, Victor sought to form a life which was so planned and perfected, that his emotional life quickly began to emancipate. So focussed on his grasp towards knowledge, Victor's heart was confined from the true essentials which were needed to fulfill it. As Victor speaks to his professors of his progress he states, "Two years passed in this manner, during which I paid no visit to Geneva, but was engaged, heart and soul, in the pursuit of some discoveries which I hoped to make" (29). .
Frankensteins full engagement towards his studies and efforts to bring an inhuman being to life, caused his interaction with family and loved ones from home to be taken away. Without love from those who he truly cared for most, Frankenstein fell into deep misery. While Victor began to recognize his "insensibility to the charms of nature," as well as the absence of love, he claimed, "I wished as it were, to procrastinate all that related to my feelings of affection until the great object, which swallowed up every habit of my nature, should be completed" (33). Feeling overpowered by his own knowledge, Victor attributed to completing his experiments and postponing all affection, hoping to relieve distractions.
