The age of Darwin, Huxley and Herbert Spencer had not yet come, in 1859. Haeckel was still unheard of, outside of Berlin and Jena. The science of biology, in which all other science finds its fruition and justifies its being, was then scarcely “a borning.” Otherwise, Arthur Brent would have made of Dorothy’s amateurish acquaintance with botany the basis of a systematic study, leading up to that conception which came later to science, that all life is one, whether animal or vegetable; that species are the results of differentiation by selection and development, and that the scheme of nature is one uniform, consistent whole, composed of closely related parts. But this thought had not yet come to science. Darwin’s “Origin of Species” was not published until later in that year, Wallace was off on his voyages and had not yet reached those all embracing conclusions. Huxley was still only a young man of promise. Virchow was bound in those trammels of tradition from which he was destined never quite to disentangle himself, even with the stimulus of Haeckel, his wonderful pupil. But the thought that has since made science alive had been dreamed of even then. There were suggestions of it in the manuscripts,--written backwards--of Leonardo da Vinci, and Goethe had foreshadowed much of it. Nevertheless, it was not for such sake or with a purpose so broad that Arthur Brent set out to interest Dorothy South in science. His only purpose was to teach her to think, to implant in her mind that divine thirst for sound knowledge which he clearly recognized as a specific remedy for conventional narrowness of mind. The girl was quick to learn rudiments and general principles, and in laboratory work she soon surpassed her master as a maker of experiments. In such work her habits of exactitude stood her in good stead, and her conscientiousness had its important part to play. But science did not become a very serious occupation with Dorothy. It was rather play than study at first, and when she had acquired some insight into it, so that its suggestions served to explain the phenomena about her, she was fairly well content. She had no passion for original research and of that Arthur was rather glad. “That sort of thing is masculine,” he reflected, “and she is altogether a woman. I don’t want her to grow into anything else.” But to her passion for literature there was no limit. “Literature concerns itself with people,” she said to Arthur one day, “and I care more for people than for gases and bases and reactions.” But literature, in its concern for people, records the story of human life through all the centuries, and the development of human thought. It includes history and speculative philosophy and Dorothy manifested almost a passion for these.