202 
NATURE 
[DecEeMBER 31, 1896 
“Tf I should grow weary or slack, the thought of your 
strength of will and your untiring activity will spur me 
on as it spurs on many and many another. A thousand 
good-byes until we meet again.” 
They never met again ; the old enthusiast died in 1894. 
While engaged on the study of the sex of M/yxzve, and 
the nervous system of invertebrates at Bergen, Nansen 
did not neglect his physical training. A feat scarcely 
surpassed for actual danger and reckless courage by any 
of his later Arctic adventures was his crossing of Vosses- 
kavlen on snow-shoes in midwinter. In 1886 there came 
a visit to Dohrn’s Biological Station at Naples ; but the 
strictly biological studies were dropped in the following 
year, when the plan of crossing the Greenland ice-sheet 
had been definitely formed. It is not necessary to re- 
count this achievement, the success of which raised 
Nansen at once to one of the highest places amongst 
Arctic travellers, brought him a shower of distinctions, 
and prepared the way for the triumph of his Arctic 
drift. 
Hans Nansen 
That Nansen has found his sphere in the work of polar 
exploration is undoubted. By race, ancestry, and up- 
bringing, adventurous travel was his inevitable destiny, 
and success was assured by a combination of qualities 
which are rarely found together. His marvellous 
physique comes first, making him as nearly impregnable 
to cold, fatigue and hunger as ever man was; then his 
equally remarkable determination and daring, qualities of 
mind which urged his physical powers to the uttermost, 
and mede retreat from any path once entered upon an 
impossibility. His friends knew that if Fridtiof Nansen 
did not return successful from any quest, he would never 
return at all. The principle which most shocked 
previous Arctic explorers was his rule of providing no 
means of retreat, in fact of making retreat impossible— 
the principle of Fram. These qualities of body and 
mind are frequently combined in “ record-breakers” of 
every kind ; their combination may result ina champion 
prize-fighter, a professional football player, a 30-mile- 
an-hour cyclist, a peak-conquering mountaineer ;_ they 
NO. 1418, VOL. 55 
ensure, in fact, merely a forced-draught motive power. 
The third element is that of training, the educational 
discipline of home and school succeeded by the scien- 
tific discipline of the university and the laboratory. 
This gave direction and controlling power to the fervid 
energy; but the capital importance of this fact has 
not been adequately set forth in the biography. It may 
have been recognised by the authors, but it has been 
obscured by a quite unnecessary mass of irrelevant 
matter. A case like this is a splendid proof of the 
superiority of scientific education over any merely classical 
teaching in developing the whole power of a man. 
We believe that Nansen owed his success in both his 
great journeys to the fact that he could himself study the 
conditions he had to meet, and plan his method of 
meeting them ; that having studied and formed his plans 
himself, he could also carry them out himself with the 
aid of a few devoted companions. The contrast of the 
expeditions planned by a large Committee, and executed 
Fridtiof Nansen. 
by a large crew under orders they cannot deviate from, 
is quite apparent. The plan suggested for obviating 
railway accidents, by mounting a director in front 
of the engine, was that which Nansen adopted. He 
was ready to stake his life on the accuracy of his 
methods; and if his biological studies did not settle 
the problems of the nervous system, or even of the hag- 
fish, they certainly disciplined his powers of observation 
and of reasoning, and so enabled him to succeed and to 
excel in his chosen career. 
A few slips in translating or printing may be pointed 
out. On p. 80 we read, ‘‘ He pursues the paltriest insect 
revealed by the microscope, no less impetuously than he 
pursued the bears over the Arctic wastes.” Here zvsect 
stands apparently for the fine old azzmalcule, although 
pattriest is even in that case a curious word to use with 
reference to an object of biological research. On p. 119, 
“the English zoologist G. P. Cunningham” should, of 
course, be J. T. Cunningham. In comparing the cold of 
the Greenland Ice-cap with that of Northern Siberia, 
