14 LEEUWENHOEK AND HIS ‘‘ LITTLE ANIMALS”’ 
side with Hollanders against Spain or France or Germany. 
You will remember too, I hope, that an English nobleman 
(Dudley, Earl of Leicester) was once Governor-General of 
Holland—after his mistress, our good Queen Hlizabeth, had 
been offered (and had refused) the sovereignty of the States. 
Had Cromwell’s dream—a little later—come true, Englishmen, 
Scotsmen, Irishmen, Welshmen, Hollanders, Zealanders, and 
Frieslanders, might even now be living together in the first 
“United States”. Just think of that! And of more personal 
and private relations, let me recall the beautiful friendship of 
Erasmus and Thomas More—a Dutchman and an Englishman 
who were true brothers. Let me remind you also that the first 
President of the Royal Society (Sir Robert Moray) was formerly 
a soldier in the Netherlands, where he had many friends, and 
could speak the language; that a very celebrated Hollander 
(Christiaan Huygens) was among the first Fellows; and that 
the Royal “ Patron and Founder” of our Society was himself 
an exile in Leeuwenhoek's land during his lifetime. 
But you will ask (very properly) what all this has got to do 
with Leeuwenhoek himself and with this book? I will tell you. 
In reintroducing plain Mr van Leeuwenhoek, the Dutch draper 
and amateur micrographer, I want also to vmpress upon you 
that there are still blood-brothers in every different nation. 
Barriers erected by birth and prejudice and education are 
blown sky-high before the fire of common human aims and 
interests. Language and land and lineage are no bars to 
mutual and native understanding. An honest man in any 
country is linked to all other honest men in all other countries. 
-_ When a true man like Antony van Leeuwenhoek ?¢s born, the 
heavens are opened. Even when he dies he is not dead: his 
spirit glows with the divine light forever, and will forever be 
seen and understood—somewhere, sometime, by somebody. No 
Princes, Popes, politicians, or even prophets, can unite man- 
kind in universal brotherhood; but the disinterested and simple 
men everywhere can (and perhaps eventually will) unknowingly 
draw warring nations together, and may ultimately save 
humanity from the fate of the Triassic reptiles. As surely as 
Leeuwenhoek, the old Dutch draper, has—after centuries of 
misunderstanding—established connexion with me, a modern 
English biologist, and has awakened my sympathy with himself 
and his countrymen; just as surely will other men of other 
nations and other interests be drawn together by the endearment 
