Whether it was a question of history or of cosmogony, or whether he was
handling a test-tube or a blow-pipe; what he was about I did not feel
sure; but I took it for granted that it was some crucial question or
other he was at work on, some point bearing on the thought of the time.
For the Master, I have observed, is pretty sagacious in striking for the
points where his work will be like to tell. We all know that class of
scientific laborers to whom all facts are alike nourishing mental food,
and who seem to exercise no choice whatever, provided only they can get
hold of these same indiscriminate facts in quantity sufficient. They
browse on them, as the animal to which they would not like to be compared
browses on his thistles. But the Master knows the movement of the age he
belongs to; and if he seems to be busy with what looks like a small piece
of trivial experimenting, one may feel pretty sure that he knows what he
is about, and that his minute operations are looking to a result that
will help him towards attaining his great end in life,--an insight, so
far as his faculties and opportunities will allow, into that order of
things which he believes he can study with some prospect of taking in its
significance.
I became so anxious to know what particular matter he was busy with, that
I had to call upon him to satisfy my curiosity.
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