CH. iv PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE 57 



which is as plainly before your eyes as the fish itself; 

 look again, look again ! " 



For three days the student was kept examining the 

 fish before Agassiz was satisfied that he had discovered 

 for himself the essential points of its structure. On the 

 fourth day, a second fish of the same group was placed 

 beside the first and he was bidden to point out the resem- 

 blances and differences between the two ; another and 

 another followed until the entire family had been 

 examined and the relationships of the members of the 

 group could be brought in review. The student thus 

 received that training in the observation of facts and 

 their orderly arrangement which is characteristic of the 

 scientific method. " Facts are stubborn things," Agassiz 

 would say, " until brought into connection with some 

 general law." 



For successful work in science, or in any subject, the 

 student must have interest as well as the faculty of 

 distinguishing the relative value of things. Confucius, 

 the great Chinese philosopher, used to send away his 

 disciples who did not show sufficient ardour for study, or 

 such as were not sufficiently intelligent to understand 

 him. " When," he said, " I have shown a pupil one 

 corner of the subject, and he is unable to discover the 

 other three, I do not repeat my lesson." Devotion to 

 a subject will lead to the acquisition of knowledge, but 

 mastery is only secured when it is combined with insight. 



The old French anatomist, Mery, said of himself and his 

 colleagues that they were like the rag-pickers of Paris, who knew 

 every street and alley, but had no notion of what went on in the 

 houses. The accumulation of miscellaneous knowledge of useful 

 things, copious, inexact, inapplicable, may, like rag- picking, 

 leave us ignorant of the world in which we live. Let us try to 

 reach the inner life of something, great or small. The truly 

 useful knowledge is mastery. Mastery does not come by listening 



