How does Victor describe the way he came to pursue knowledge in the natural sciences? What does he at first find lacking in modern natural science, and what make him at last find such modern studies and methods attractive?

Victor develops a consuming interest in the structure of the human frame: he longs to determine what animates it, what constitutes the "principle of life." Seized by a "supernatural enthusiasm," he begins to explore life by studying its inevitable counterpart: death. He rapidly verses himself in the rudiments of anatomy, and begins pillaging graveyards for specimens to use in his dissections. Victor discovers the secret of how to generate life through a sudden epiphany. He does not, however, share the content of this revelation with Walton (and, by extension, with the reader), because his own knowledge resulted in misery and destruction. Victor is looking to transcend science into a God-like obsession to create life.