FIELD AND STUDY 



good, but vital knowledge is better; details are in- 

 dispensable to the specialist, but a knowledge of 

 relations and of wholes satisfies me more. 



All the facts of natural science that throw light 

 upon the methods and the spirit of nature, are 

 doubly welcome. I can assimilate them. I can appre- 

 ciate their ideal values. I can link them up with my 

 intellectual and emotional experiences. They make 

 me feel more at home in the world because they so 

 enlarge my field of interest. The ground under- 

 foot becomes a history, the stars overhead a reve- 

 lation, the play of the invisible and unsuspected 

 forces about me and through me a new kind of 

 gospel. 



Yet I seem to approach nature through my 

 understanding and desire for knowledge more 

 than through any ethical or purely poetical craving. 

 There is little of the moralist or preacher in me, but 

 a good deal of the philosopher and investigator. I 

 want to know the reason of things, and the relations 

 of things, their intellectual rather than their moral 

 values. I do not want the precise figures of the 

 astronomer, nor the detailed proofs of the geologist, 

 nor the formulae of the chemist, nor the data of the 

 zoologist; what I want is light upon the whole of 

 Nature — her methods, her laws, her results, her 

 non-human ways. What I get out of botany would 

 hardly be available for the classroom; what I get 

 out of biology would not go into a textbook. I love 



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