6 The Living Plant 



lies deeper and is slower of action. This is why literature is en- 

 joyed by nearly all people and science by only a few, and why 

 literary reputations can be made in youth while those of science 

 are mostly attained much later in life. Yet, when grasped, the 

 pleasures of science are no less keen than those derived from any 

 other field of intellectual endeavor, and I have even fancied that 

 they jdeld an especially deep and lasting satisfaction, though in 

 this perhaps I am wrong. There can be, I believe, no pleasure 

 in life any greater than that which comes to the scientific man with 

 the moment in which some truth heretofore not known to man- 

 kind first dawns upon him; and it is in the hope of such moments 

 of exaltation that he is willing: to undergo toil, poverty, hardship, 

 and even peril of life itself. The charm that there is in this pur- 

 suit of truth receives many illustrations from the biographies of 

 eminent scientific investigators, and especially from their familiar 

 letters, in which can be seen more clearly than elsewhere the 

 actual workings of the scientific spirit.* But though felt to the 



* A characteristic example is furnished by the following letter written by Charles 

 Darwin to Asa Gray, — the eminent American Botanist. 



Down, August 9 [1862]. 



My dear Gray, — It is late at night, and I am going to write briefly, and of course 

 to beg a favour. 



The Mitchella very good, but pollen apparently equal-sized. I have just examined 

 Hottonia, grand difference in pollen. Echium vulgare, a humbug, merely a case like 

 Thymus. But I am almost stark staring mad over Lythrum; if I can prove what I 

 fully believe; it is a grand case of Trimorphism, with three different pollens and three 

 stigmas; I have castrated and fertilized above ninety flowers, trying all the eighteen 

 distinct crosses which are possible within the limits of this one species! I cannot ex- 

 plain, but I feel sure you would think it a grand case. I have been writing to Botan- 

 ists to see if I can possibly get L. hyssopifolia, and it has just flashed on me that you 

 might have Lythrum in North America, and I have looked to your Manual. For 

 the love of heaven have a look at some of your species, and if you can get me seed, 

 do; I want much to try species with few stamens, if they are dimorphic; Nes(p,a verl- 

 icillata I should expect to be trimorphic. Seed! Seed! Seed! I should rather like 

 seed of Mitchella. But oh, Lythrum! 



Your utterly mad friend, 



C. Darwin. 



[Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, New York, 1888, II, 475.J 



