FIELD AND STUDY 



itself had come in the same way. From planets to 

 peas, things are slow a-coming, and ceaseless change 

 and transformation mark their courses. 



One cannot store one's mind with any consider- 

 able part of the technical knowledge which science 

 brings, and does not need to. An observer and lover 

 of Nature, like myself, craves only insight into her 

 methods; loves to trace her footsteps, as it were; 

 to contrast her prodigality in some fields with her 

 parsimony in others; to note her contradictions, 

 and to cross-question her till they are cleared up. 

 Bird and beast and tree and plant are each vital 

 points of contact with the vast whole, and the self- 

 same currents flow in each. 



I turn to chemistry, not for technical knowledge 

 of substances and compounds, but for new proof 

 of Nature's wonders and mysteries. It reveals to 

 me a new world that ordinarily our eyes and ears do 

 not take in — a world of activities and potencies so 

 unlike the world of tangible bodies and mechanical 

 forces in which we habitually live, that it never 

 ceases to be a surprise and delight to me. Mechanical 

 relations and rebounds we come in contact with 

 constantly — mechanical mixtures and suspen- 

 sions and siftings and transportations; but chemical 

 reactions and transmutations are entirely of an- 

 other order. In mechanics we get change of bulk, 

 of place, of direction, of form, of color; in chemistry 

 we get a change of substance, of quality, of nature; 

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