The Necessity for the Amateur Spirit in Scientific Work. 73 



fund of accurate ideas that represents the mental wealth — the 

 only safe and enduring- wealth — of mankind. 



And in his intellectual as in his physical career, the progress 

 of each worker is an epitome of the progress of the race. From 

 the simple elements of a few impressions that have chanced to 

 strike deeper into his consciousness than the habitual sensations 

 of his daily life, his observant faculties are aroused, and are 

 directed with a slowly growing sense of purport toward a 

 definite end. If we turn from the particular to the general — 

 from the individual to the race — how slow were the first stages 

 in this progress let the archaeologist declare ! 



I have sometimes half-seriously pondered over the genera- 

 tions of early research-work that led up to the discovery of the 

 pocket or its predecessor, the wallet, with its later development, 

 the collecting bag. Judging from the relative distribution of 

 flint implements, it is clear that for a long time after the 

 discovery by primitive man that certain kinds of stone could be 

 made useful for cutting, it was his habit when there was cutting 

 to be done to resort to the places where cutting tools were 

 readily obtainable, and there do the work. Like the lowest 

 savages of the present day — practically unclad : with no means of 

 conveyance for small objects except hands and mouth, and 

 these available only when not otherwise occupied : imbued also, 

 no doubt, with the usual savag-e disreg^ard for contingencies — 

 our early ancestors seem to have struggled along for ages with- 

 out so much as the germ of the idea which underlies the evolution 

 of the pocket-knife ; and their upward progress must have been 

 terribly hampered in consequence. To become even a geologist 

 under such conditions was of course impossible, and it is no 

 wonder that the only Ancient Briton we know to have made a 

 feeble attempt in this direction was found by the archaeologists 

 dead in his barrow with his burdensome specimens around him.* 



Is it not clear that the invention of the wallet marked a very 

 decided step towards an accurate knowledge of things, by 

 rendering possible the collection of material that served to fix 

 and correct the hazy remembrance of common objects ? How 

 distorted such memories tend to become, even at a much more 

 advanced stage of human progress, we may know from the 

 grotesque caricatures of natural objects that were based on the 

 recollection of travellers to strange lands in mediaeval times. 



But with the wallet once in common use, the habit of 



* See illustration in 'Naturalist,' Nov. 1904, p. 321. 

 1906 March i. 



