t knowledge; and it would, if a man were willing to put up with a
reasonable amount of exact knowledge, eke it out with his brains, some
of it; but when he wants all the exact knowledge there is, and nothing
else but exact knowledge, and is not willing to mix his brains with it,
it is different. When a man puts his whole being into a vise of exact
knowledge, he finds that he has about as perfect a convenience for being
miserable as could possibly be devised. He soon becomes incapable of
noticing things or of enjoying things in the world for themselves. With
one or two exceptions, I have never known a scientist to whom his
knowing a thing, or not knowing it, did not seem the only important
thing about it. Of course when a man's mind gets into this dolefully
cramped, exact condition, a universe like this is not what it ought to
be for him. He lives too unprotected a life. His whole attitude toward
the universe becomes one of wishing things would keep off of him in
it--things he does not know. Are there not enough things he does not
know even in his specialty? And as for this eternal being reminded of
the others, this slovenly habit of "general information" that interesting
people have--this guessing, inferring, and generalising--what is it all
for? What does it all come to? If a man is after knowledge, let him have
knowledge, knowledge that is knowledge, let him find a fact, anything
for a fact, get God into a corner, hug one fact and live with it and die
with it.

When a man once gets into this shut-in attitude it is of little use to
put a word in, with him, for the daily habit of taking the roof off
one's mind, letting the universe play upon it instead of trying to bore
a hole in it somewhere. "What does it avail after all, after it is all
over, after a long life, even if the hole is bored," I say to him, "to
stand by one's little hole and cry, 'Behold, oh, human race, this Gimlet
Hole which I have bored in infinite space! Let it be forever named for
me.'" And in the meantime the poor fellow gets no joy out of living. He
does not even get credit for his not-living, seventy years of it. He
fences off his little place to know a little of nothing in, becomes a
specialist, a foot note to infinite space, and is never noticed
afterwards (and quite reasonably) by any one--not even by himself.

VII

Monads

I am not saying that this is the way a scientist--a mere scientist, one
who has the fixed habit of not reading books