6 
Transactions Texas Academy of Science. 
work itself is their impelling’ motive. Clearly the scientist must 
have recognition, if only from a few colleagues, he will have the 
“well done. ” For should one become shipwrecked like our philo- 
sophical friend Defoe upon an oceanic isle, without expectation of 
rescue and beyond the reach of the mails, is it not likely that his 
ardor for research would diminish? Yet though this is so, scientists 
do not try short cuts towards fame. For one may work most in- 
tensely for a year or a number of years, and the result be a little 
memoir published in a journal; the world knows nothing of it, 
the author’s wife of his bosom and his intimate friends seem to 
think it has the value of an ancient Greek coin, that they can not 
decipher; perhaps less than a score of savants gleaned from the 
world over will be all to carefully persue it. He would obtain a 
far greater reading circle by writing for a popular magazine, or 
by issuing a textbook; but men of rich ideas have seldom time for 
such misuse of the pen, and God grant that they overcome the 
temptation ! The greater part of scientific thought is monographic 
and above the common mind, and the thousands of small and labori- 
ous memoirs published each year do not spell fame in the common 
opinion. Accordingly, though the ambition for praise is probably 
always present, it is not desire for the praise of the multitude, and 
further there is much work done without any thought of praise 
whatsoever. 
Thus neither financial advancement nor fame is the impulse to- 
wards the study, it must be something else. 
In the case of most men who have attained considerable prom- 
inence in their scientific callings, their inclination towards their 
subject has appeared in the tender years of life, and was not the 
result of a deliberate choice in later years. We then say of them 
in somewhat loose expression, yet certainly with more accuracy 
than is generally supposed, that they were born to the profession ; 
that they possessed tendencies powerful enough to counterbalance 
environmental influences. For this reason it becomes most instructive 
to compare those influences that are strongest during childhood. 
The child does not at once proceed to the analysis of phenomena; 
he is rather immediately arrested by something else appealing in 
them. We say he has curiosity, and that some children have this 
to greater extent ,than others ; those who have it to the greatest de- 
gree make the best incipient material for scientists. Now what we 
at present call the scientific mind used to be called the curious mind, 
and the curious minds of centuries ago founded our academies and 
museums, and laid the basis for modern speculation. They rooted 
themselves in the still older alchemical and astrological ideas, also 
