Gamaliel Bradford

“ As one who has always delighted in solitary wood walks merely for their associative beauty, I at least can bewail the deplorable ignorance as to plants and birds and insects which makes it impossible for me even to interrogate them intelligently. Lack of time or natural indolence have prevented my accumulating the knowledge which would put all these things in their proper relations and make them tell a story which the trained and expert observer instantly and instinctively reads in them. ”

“ And when he makes intimate confession of the workings of the theory in his own person and life, this is the result: ‘It is said, “Man is the lord of creation.” Man is the lord of suffering, my friend. There is no clearer proof of the non-existence of God than life.... If you could read in my soul, you would be terrified.... There is not in all the universe a creature more unhappy than I. People think me happy. ”

“ If it is a question of theories, they can say with Professor Whitehead: ‘A clash of doctrines is not a disaster; it is an opportunity.’ If it is a case of more material strife, they can disguise it with the ameliorations of the social instinct, or such substantial optimism as sustained President Eliot through his ninety years in the view that the joy of life is in ‘contest without conflict.’
More infirm, more frail, more doubting tempers may not take it so. There is the weary horror of endless multiplicity, sweeping from eternity to eternity. ”

“ Exact and watchful vision is the first necessity; but it does not go far, or not farthest, except as it has behind it the thoughts that wander through eternity, the vast and questing genius that is perpetually on the lookout for causes and explanations and is eager to evolve theory from the sure and substantial but inanimate basis of fact. Even Thoreau almost deplores his intense preoccupation with the fascinating business of observing: ‘Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye. ”

“ It is interesting, in this personal and human connection, to see how the scientific qualities develop into virtues to some extent akin to the Christian ideal. For example, the recognition and admission of ignorance, on which we have been insisting, must carry with it, should carry with it, the eminently Christian virtue of humility. When you are oppressively aware how little you know, how far your information is from being adequate and your conclusions from being final, it is impossible to maintain a spirit of arrogance or self-assertion. ”

“ Scherer’s amplification about the glory of ‘the dream that knows itself to be a dream, of thought that thinks itself.’ The final emptiness and futility which at times appear to attach to the profoundest search for truth have never been more grandly stated than in the words with which Sainte-Beuve brings his vast history of Port Royal to a close: ‘I have been and I am only an investigator, a sincere observer, attentive and scrupulous.... I have been after my fashion a man of truth, so far as I have been able to attain it. But how little is the best we can attain! ”

“ On the other hand, neither Goethe nor Sainte-Beuve is for a moment to be compared with Darwin in that ineffable sweetness and simple charm which endeared him to all who came into contact with him and which breathe everywhere through his letters and even his more formal scientific works.
One striking feature in Sainte-Beuve is that he recognized fully the absorbing, engrossing nature of the scientific spirit, yet appreciated that the pursuit of knowledge does not necessarily bring happiness. No one has expressed the barren desolation of mortal life with more acrid bitterness than he. ”

“ Indeed, here again it is curious to see how, when the pursuit of scientific truth rises to its highest intensity and white heat of ardor, it brings about a sort of self-abnegation, which approaches and suggests the mystical self-abandonment of Christian ecstasy. He shall leave all and follow me, says religion. And we have seen something of the same spirit in Darwin’s apparently colder declaration that the man of science should have neither wife nor child, but a heart of stone, and a brain altogether free for the vast, abstract researches which make the whole of his life. ”

“ The delight of observation, which began in childhood, continued to old age, and increased instead of weakening. When he was fatigued and worn with writing and theorizing, when illness tormented him and weakness rendered more concentrated effort impossible, it was a relief to turn to the simple contemplation of facts, and the budding and fading of flowers and the varied activity of insects offered at all times diversion and contentment. Sometimes he dwells upon the larger aspects of such contemplation, the joy of discovery, the excitement of finding what has never been found before. ”