i8o THE LAND'S END 



classify everything is the source of his trouble, when 

 with a Reaumur's skill his curious mind would dis- 

 tinguish men according to their racial and tempera- 

 mental characters. It vexes his little busy brain, 

 which loves neatness and symmetry, that men are so 

 various, so complex, that they have so many hidden 

 meanings and motives and instincts so many in- 

 visible threads in the woven texture of their natures, 

 which occasionally shine out, yellow and purple and 

 scarlet among the threads of sober grey, yet when 

 looked at closely, or examined with a magnifying-glass, 

 become invisible again. Either he must give up the 

 quest and the task in despair or else go doggedly on 

 with a sort of stupid courage, trying not to think 

 that he is blundering all the time. It is consoling in 

 a difficulty of this kind to recall the case of an emi- 

 nent ethnologist, who was exceedingly industrious 

 and prolific and was very great a short generation 

 ago, about which time his learned contemporaries, 

 vexed at his facile method of overcoming all difficul- 

 ties, rose up against and overthrew him, smashing 

 and pulverising his beautiful theories. After which, 

 with a very engaging, proud humility, he boasted that 

 he had been the fool to rush in where the angels (his 

 opponents) had feared to tread, and that to attack and 

 overthrow they had had to follow him into new and 

 wider fields where they otherwise would never have 

 ventured. We must all be fools in the same way, if we 

 have a little of that courage which I have called stupid, 

 each in his own small sphere, and we certainly do a 

 useful thing if, in exposing our thick skulls to 



