THE SCIENTIFIC MOOD 13 



But, just as with any other disproportionate 

 development, there are risks in the hypertrophied 

 emotional mood. Uncurbed by science, un- 

 related to practice, it may become morbid, even 

 mad. Rational wonder may degenerate into "a 

 caterwauling about Nature." Enthusiasm for 

 what is beautiful, without relevant activity, may 

 become an unpleasant effervescence. There may 

 be overfeeling, just as there may be overdoing. 



THE SCIENTIFIC MOOD CONTRASTED WITH THE 

 OTHERS. The scientific worker has elected pri- 

 marily to know, not do. He does not directly seek, 

 like the practical man, to realize the ideal of 

 exploiting nature and controlling life though he 

 makes this more possible; he seeks rather to 

 idealize to conceptualize the real, or at least 

 those aspects of reality that are available in his 

 experience. He thinks more of lucidity and 

 formulae than of loaves and fishes. He is more 

 concerned with knowing Nature than with en- 

 joying her. His main intention is to describe 

 the sequences in Nature in the simplest possible 

 formulae, to make a working thought-model of 

 the known world. He would make the world 

 translucent, not that emotion may catch the 

 glimmer of the indefinable light that shines 

 through, but for other reasons because of his 

 inborn inquisitiveness, because of his dislike of 

 obscurities, because of his craving for a system 



