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Transactions Texas Academy of Science. 
lections, as the bibliophile his Elzevirs, and developes or rather main- 
tains a real love for the organisms that he has with so much care 
learned to appreciate. “My library,” he says, “are these animals, 
living, breathing creatures like myself. Their characters are the let- 
ters of an alphabet whereby I am to read them. In all of them 
great beauty is to be found. ’ ’ Thus it is that the naturalist comes to 
recognize his oneness with the rest of Nature, his harmony with the 
whole, and realizes that he himself is but a small step in a very 
great progress. This is the idea of comradeship, and it embodies 
respect. But this feeling of oneness is an outgrowth of the natural- 
ist ’s learning, it is associated with but not the cause of that enthu- 
siasm that keeps him at his work. 
His enthusiasm, his motive force, seems to me to be due in very 
great part to one of the influences of curiosity in the child, namely 
to a delight in the beautiful. He maintains his enthusiasm and keeps 
at his work through all odds because he continues to regard as beauti- 
ful the objects of his investigation. He perceives beauty and is held 
by it quite as much in the phenomenon as in the interpretation of the 
phenomenon. All intellectual men find a beauty in the rational inter- 
pretation, for that, is an operation of the higher mental powers. But 
the point on which I would insist is that at the same time the natural- 
ist, if he be truly one, continues his love for the beauty of the phe- 
nomenon or object on which he bases his conclusions, and does not 
regard it simply as a stepping stone to the latter. Indeed this ap- 
preciation of the formal beauty is the stimulus in the great part of 
his work. The important incentive in scientific work is not cold logic, 
not any statistical summation, but delight in the beauty of the phe- 
nomena; it is so potent because it constitutes a major part of the 
desire to investigate. 
Scientific explanations are creations of the scientist, consequently 
he has in some degree the same fondness for them as he has for his 
children. But we can not explain unless we have something to ex- 
plain, and for the same reason there can be no desire for interpre- 
tation unless there first be a love of the phenomena. Before a gen- 
eralization is possible, in any synthetic study, there must be an ex- 
amination of phenomena through sensations. A man studies those 
phenomena that he finds most beautiful, and continues at his work 
just so long as he feels their charm. 
In the pastime of the anatomist there is much that would seem 
repulsive, which may be suggested rather than described. But he 
carries out this part of it to lay bare the wonderful harmony of 
line and the perfect symmetries to be discovered in such studies. 
No more beautiful lines have been chiselled upon marble or painted 
