Such is true science. Is it a study to make men conceited and self-
sufficient? Believe it not. If a scientific man, or one who calls
himself so, be conceited, the conceit was there before the science;
part of his natural defects: and if it stays there long after he
has really given himself to the patient study of nature, then is he
one of those of whom Solomon has said: "Though you pound a fool in
a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his folly depart
from him."
For what more fit to knock the conceit out of a student, than being
pounded by these same hard facts--which tell him just enough to let
him know--how little he knows? What more fit to make a man patient,
humble, reverent, than being stopped short, as every man of science
is, after each half-dozen steps, by some tremendous riddle which he
cannot explain--which he may have to wait years to get explained--
which as far as he can see will never be explained at all?
The poet says: "An undevout astronomer is mad," and he says truth.
It is only those who know a little of nature, who fancy that they
know much. I have heard a young man say, after hearing a few
popular chemical lectures, and seeing a few bottle and squirt
experiments: Oh, water--water is only oxygen and hydrogen!--as if
he knew all about it. While the true chemist would smile sadly
enough at the youth's hasty conceit, and say in his heart: "Well,
he is a lucky fellow.
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