than a great company
of similar flowers; he has perhaps a wider view; he sees the bounding
hedgerow, the distant line of hills, whereas the humbler flower sees
little but a forest of stems and blooms, with the light falling dimly
between. And a great savant, too, is far more ready to credit other
people with a wider knowledge than they possess. It is the lesser kind
of savant, the man of one book, of one province, of one period, who is
inclined to think that he is differentiated from the crowd. The great
man is far too much preoccupied with real progress to waste time and
energy in showing up the mistakes of others. It is the lesser kind of
savant, jealous of his own reputation, anxious to show his superiority,
who loves to censure and deride the feebler brother. If one ever sees a
relentless and pitiless review of a book--an exposure, as it is called,
by one specialist of another's work--one may be fairly certain that the
critic is a minute kind of person. Again, the great specialist is never
anxious to obtrude his subject; he is rather anxious to hear what is
going on in other regions of mental activity, regions which he would
like to explore but cannot. It is the lesser light that desires to
dazzle and bewilder his company, to tyrannise, to show off. It is the
most difficult thing to get a great savant to talk about his subject,
though, if he is kind and patient, will answer unintelligent questions,
and help a feeble mind along, it is one of the most delightful things
in the world. I seized the opportunity some little while ago, on finding
myself sitting next to a great physicist, of asking him a series of
fumbling questions on the subject of modern theories of matter; for an
hour I stumbled like a child, supported by a strong hand, in a dim and
unfamiliar world, among the mysterious essences of things. I should like
to try to reproduce it here, but I have no doubt I should reproduce it
all wrong. Still, it was deeply inspiring to look out into chaos, to
hear the rush and motion of atoms, moving in vast vortices, to learn
that inside the hardest and most impenetrable of substances there was
probably a feverish intensity of inner motion. I do not know that I
acquired any precise knowledge, but I drank deep draughts of wonder
and awe. The great man, with his amused and weary smile, was infinitely
gentle, and left me, I will say, far more conscious of the beauty and
the holiness of knowledge. I said something to him abou