open up for this fiend fields of exertion great enough
for the absorption of its tireless energies, and none of them is more
hopeful than the great world of books, if the demon is docile enough to
be coaxed into it. Then will its erratic restlessness be sobered by the
immensity of the sphere of exertion, and the consciousness that, however
vehemently and however long it may struggle, the resources set before it
will not be exhausted when the life to which it is attached shall have
faded away; and hence, instead of dreading the languor of inaction, it
will have to summon all its resources of promptness and activity to get
over any considerable portion of the ground within the short space
allotted to the life of man.

That the night cometh when no man can work, haunts those who have gone
so far in their investigations, and draws their entire energies into
their pursuit with an exclusiveness which astonishes the rest of the
world. But the energies might be more unfitly directed. Look back, for
instance--no great distance back--on the great high-priest of our
national school of logic and metaphysics,--he who gathered up its divers
rays, and, helping them with light from all other sources of human
knowledge, concentrated the whole into one powerful focus. No one could
look at the massive brow, the large, full, lustrous eyes, the firm
compressed lip, without seeing that the demon of energy was powerful
within him, and had it not found work in the conquest of all human
learning, must have sought it elsewhere. You see in him the nature that
must follow up all inquiries, not by languid solicitation but hot
pursuit. His conquests as he goes are rapid but complete. Summing up the
thousands upon thousands of volumes, upon all matters of human study and
in many languages, which he has passed through his hands, you think he
has merely dipped into them or skimmed them, or in some other shape put
them to superficial use. You are wrong: he has found his way at once to
the very heart of the living matter of each one; between it and him
there are henceforth no secrets.[39]

[Footnote 39: How a nature endowed with powerful impulses like these
might be led along with them into a totally different groove, I am
reminded by a traditionary anecdote of student life. A couple of college
chums are under the impression that their motions are watched by an
inquisitive tutor, who for the occasion may be called Dr Fusby. They
become both exceeding wr