Glaucus; Or, The Wonders of the ShoreKingsley, Charles
History
Glaucus; Or, The Wonders of the Shore
Kingsley, Charles
Natural history -- Juvenile literature; Seashore biology -- Juvenile literature
And last, but not least, the perfect naturalist should have in him the
very essence of true chivalry, namely, self-devotion; the desire to
advance, not himself and his own fame or wealth, but knowledge and
mankind. He should have this great virtue; and in spite of many
shortcomings (for what man is there who liveth and sinneth not?),
naturalists as a class have it to a degree which makes them stand out
most honourably in the midst of a self-seeking and mammonite generation,
inclined to value everything by its money price, its private utility.
The spirit which gives freely, because it knows that it has received
freely; which communicates knowledge without hope of reward, without
jealousy and rivalry, to fellow-students and to the world; which is
content to delve and toil comparatively unknown, that from its obscure
and seemingly worthless results others may derive pleasure, and even
build up great fortunes, and change the very face of cities and lands, by
the practical use of some stray talisman which the poor student has
invented in his laboratory;—this is the spirit which is abroad among our
scientific men, to a greater degree than it ever has been among any body
of men for many a century past; and might well be copied by those who
profess deeper purposes and a more exalted calling, than the discovery of
a new zoophyte, or the classification of a moorland crag.
And it is these qualities, however imperfectly they may be realized in
any individual instance, which make our scientific men, as a class, the
wholesomest and pleasantest of companions abroad, and at home the most
blameless, simple, and cheerful, in all domestic relations; men for the
most part of manful heads, and yet of childlike hearts, who have turned
to quiet study, in these late piping times of peace, an intellectual
health and courage which might have made them, in more fierce and
troublous times, capable of doing good service with very different
instruments than the scalpel and the microscope.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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