Qualifications 



Rain 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



570 



standing their constant change of abode. 

 No other race presents us with more stri- 

 king examples of extensive land journeys, 

 undertaken by private individuals, not only 

 for purposes of trade, but also with the 

 view of collecting information, surpassing 

 in these respects the travels of the Buddhist 

 priests of Tibet and China, Marco Polo, 

 and the Christian missionaries, who were 

 sent on an embassy to the Mongolian 

 princes. HUMBOLDT Cosmos, vol. ii, pt. ii, 

 p. 212. (H., 1897.) 



2812. QUALIFICATIONS OF GREAT 

 SCIENTIS T Kepler Imaginative Power 

 Joined with Accuracy of Observation. My 

 reason for more particularly naming Kepler 

 in these remarks on the influence of direct 

 sensuous contemplation has been to point 

 out how, in this great and highly gifted 

 man, a taste for imaginative combinations 

 was combined with a remarkable talent for 

 observation, an earnest and severe method 

 of induction, a courageous and almost un- 

 paralleled perseverance in calculation, and 

 a mathematical profoundness of mind, 

 which, revealed in his " Stereometria Doli- 

 orum," exercised a happy influence on Fer- 

 mat, and, through him, on the invention of 

 the theory of the infinitesimal calculus. A 

 man endowed with such a mind was pre- 

 eminently qualified by the richness and mo- 

 bility of his ideas, and by the bold cosmical 

 conjectures which he advanced, to animate 

 and augment the movement which led the 

 seventeenth century uninterruptedly for- 

 ward to the exalted object presented in an 

 extended contemplation of the universe. 

 HUMBOLDT Cosmos, vol. ii, pt. ii, p. 327. 

 (H., 1897.) 



2813. QUALITIES, MORAL, RE- 

 QUIRED IN SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 



Science [early] fascinated me on its own 

 account. To carry it duly and honestly 

 out, moral qualities were incessantly in- 

 voked. There was no room allowed for in- 

 sincerity no room even for carelessness. 

 The edifice of science had been raised by 

 men who had unswervingly followed the 

 truth as it is in Nature, and in doing so 

 had often sacrificed interests which are 

 usually potent in this world. TYNDALL 

 Fragments of Science, vol. ii, ch. 15, p. 383. 

 (A., 1900.) 



2814. QUESTIONS FOR WHICH 

 SCIENCE HAS NO ANSWER Yearning a 

 Prophecy. [The] notion of decay, however, 

 implied a reference to a period when the 

 Matterhorn was in the full strength of 

 mountainhood. My thoughts naturally ran 

 back to its possible growth and origin. Nor 

 did they halt there, but wandered on 

 through molten worlds to that nebulous 

 haze which philosophers have regarded, and 

 with good reason, as the proximate source 

 of all material things. . . . Did that 

 formless fog contain potentially the sadness 

 with which I regarded the Matterhorn? Did 



the thought which now ran back to it simply 

 return to its primeval home? . . . 



Questions like these, useless as they seem, 

 may still have a practical outcome. For if 

 the final goal of man has not been yet at- 

 tained, if his development has not been yet 

 arrested, who can say that such yearnings 

 and questions are not necessary to the open- 

 ing of a finer vision, to the budding and the 

 growth of diviner powers? Without this 

 upward force could man have risen to his 

 present height? When I look at the heav- 

 ens and the earth, at my own body, at my 

 strength and weakness of mind, even at 

 these ponderings, and ask myself, Is there 

 no being or thing in the universe that knows 

 more about these matters than I do? what 

 is my answer? TYNDALL Hours of Exercise 

 in the Alps, ch. 24, p. 291. (A., 1898.) 



2815. RACE DEPENDENT UPON 

 SINGLE TREE The South-American Fan- 

 palm. The Mauritia [fan-palm] not only 

 affords a secure habitation, but likewise 

 yields numerous articles of food. Before the 

 tender spathe unfolds its blossoms on the 

 male palm, and only at that peculiar period 

 of vegetable metamorphosis, the medullary 

 portion of the trunk is found to contain a 

 sago-like meal, which, like that of the 

 Jatropha root, is dried in thin bread-like 

 slices. The sap of the tree when fermented 

 constitutes the sweet inebriating palm-wine 

 of the Guaranes. The narrow-scaled fruit, 

 which resembles reddish pine-cones, yields, 

 like the banana and almost all tropical 

 fruits, different articles of food, according 

 to the periods at which it is gathered, 

 whether its saccharine properties are fully 

 matured, or whether it is still in a farina- 

 ceous condition. Thus in the lowest grades 

 of man's development we find the existence 

 of an entire race dependent upon almost a 

 single tree; like certain insects which are 

 confined to particular portions of a flower. 

 HUMBOLDT Views of Nature, p. 13. (Bell, 

 1896.) 



2816. RACE, IMPROVEMENT OF, 

 BY INDIVIDUAL SELF - DISCIPLINE 

 Every course of intellectual and moral self- 

 discipline, steadily and honestly pursued, 

 tends not merely to clear the mental vision 

 of the individual, but to ennoble the race; 

 by helping to develop that intuitive power 

 which arises in the first instance from the 

 embodiment in the human constitution of 

 the general resultants of antecedent experi- 

 ence, but which, in its highest form, far 

 transcends the experience that has furnished 

 the materials for its evolution just as the 

 creative power of imagination shapes out 

 conceptions which no merely constructive 

 skill could devise. CARPENTER Mental Phys- 

 iology, bk. ii, ch. 11, p. 485. (A., 1900.) 



2817. RACE SLOWLY OUTGROWS 

 CHILDISH CONCEPTION Stars Set in 

 Crystal Sphere. It must be admitted that 

 the idea of the stars being set in a hollow 

 sphere of crystal, forming the vault of the 



