12 LIFE AND WORK OF SIR JAGADIS C. BOSE 



supply of men of science ; these again are not the mere 

 products of specialist training. Scientific training can only 

 be of real service to the few survivors amidst the too common 

 home and family indifference to knowledge. That is only 

 advanced by those who, when children, were encouraged 

 to observe and question, and were not silenced and dulled 

 for life, like their elders before them, with * Don't ask silly 

 questions ! ' or evaded with ' I have no time ! ' 



A quaint memory of this intensity of questioning of the 

 father survives that of the good grandmother pretending 

 to frighten the little Jagadis with a big stick 'and really 

 a little angry : ' Boy, why don't you let my son sleep ? 

 Don't you know he is tired out ? You will be the death 

 of him ! ' 



Here is a flash of child-insight. ' Father, before coming 

 in I saw a bush on fire ! I went to it, and saw it was all 

 full of flies flies all on fire ! What was this ? What did 

 it mean ? Why did they do this ? ' Then the candid 

 answer, which even naturalists had not then got beyond. 

 * I cannot tell : we know too little ! ' ' Father, is not beauty 

 enough ? ' So the writer has seen his own little boy too 

 fascinated by some outdoor sight to come in to food ; and 

 then, when at last reluctantly brought in, and asked, ' What 

 kept you why did you not come ? ' reply, ' Beauty is 

 better than hunger ! ' (meaning of course the satisfaction 

 of it). Such incidents show that the philosophy of beauty 

 of which so many thinkers have had glimpses, as well as 

 the poets and artists their fuller vision is natural to child- 

 hood ; so Croce or Baldwin, as main exponents of this 

 philosophy to-day in the West and in America, are plainly 

 also children who have kept this early and natural vision 

 of the world. 



Here is another quaint reminiscence of child and grand- 

 mother. A devout soul, often in prayer, she was wont daily 

 to model in clay, to concentrate her devotions, an image of 

 Shiva : and this, after worship and offering of flowers, was 

 thrown back to the earth an evidence, we may note in 



