460 Study of Natural History, 



conscience to pass over nothing tlirongli laziness or hastiness, lest 

 the vision once offered and despised should be withdrawn ; and 

 looking at every object as if he were never to behold it again. 



Moreover, he must keep himself free from all those perturba- 

 tions of mind which not only weaken energy, but darken and con- 

 fuse the inductive faculty ; from haste and laziness, from melan- 

 choly, testiness, pride, and all the passions which make men see 

 only what they wish to see. Of solemn and scrupulous reverence 

 for truth, of the habit of mind which regards each fact and disco- 

 very not as our own possession, but as the possession of its Crea- 

 tor, independent of us, our tastes, our needs, or our vain-glory, we 

 hardly need to speak ; for it is the very essence of a naturalist's 

 faculty, the very tenure of his existence ; and without truthfulness 

 science would be as impossible now as chivalry would have been 

 of old. 



And last, but not least, the perfect naturalist should have in 

 him the very essence of true chivalry, namely, self-devotion ; the 

 desire to advance, not himself and his own fame or wealth, but 

 knowledge and mankind. He should have this great virtue ; and 

 in spite of many short-comings, (for what man is there who livetk 

 and sinneth not ?) naturalists as a class have it, to a degree which 

 makes them stand out most honorably in the midst of a self-seek- 

 ing and mammonite generation, inclined to value everything by 

 its money price, its private utility. The spirit which gives freely, 

 because it knows that it has received freely ; which communicates 

 knowledge without hope of reward, without jealousy and mean 

 rivalry, to fellow-students and to the world ; which is content to 

 delve and toil comparatively unknown, that from its obscure and 

 seemingly worthless results others may derive pleasure, and even 

 build up great fortunes, and change the very face of cities and lands, 

 by the practical use of some stray talisman which the poor student 

 has invented in his laboratory ; — this is the spirit which is abroad 

 among our scientific men, to a greater desfree than it ever has 

 been among any body of men, for many a century past; and might 

 well be copied by those who profess deeper purposes, and a more 

 exalted calling, than the discovery of a new zoophyte, or the clas- 

 sification of a moorland crao*. 



And it is these qualities, however imperfectly they may be rea- 

 lized in any individual instance, which make our scientific men, 

 as a class, the wholesomest and pleasantest of companions abroad, 

 and at home the most blameless, simple, and cheerful, in all do- 



