e
it lay on his shoulder. "Whatever good there is in me I've got from you.
You gave me my brain. And I'm able to do scientific work because of the
example you've been to me, though I'm rottenly unfit for it myself.
Mother, look at my hands. Do you see how they're shaking? They're steady
enough when I'm doing anything, but often when there's nothing to be
done they shake and shake. My mind's like that. When there's someone to
impress or govern I'm all right. But when I'm alone it shakes--there's a
kind of doubt. And there's such a lot of loneliness in scientific work,
when even science isn't there. Then that comes.... Doubt. Not of what
one's doing, but of what one is; or where one is. I never would have
kept on with it if it hadn't been for your example. I couldn't have
pushed on. I would have gone off and done adventurous things.

"Do you remember that French chap who wanted me to go with him into
British Guiana? I'd have liked that. There's nothing stops one thinking
so well as being a blooming hero; and it's such fun. And why should one
go on doing this lonely work that's so hellishly hard? Of course it's
important. Mother, Science is the most wonderful thing in the world.
It's a funny thing that if you think and talk about the spirit you only
look into the mind of man, but if you cut out the spirit and study
matter you look straight into the mind of God. But what good is that
when you know that at the end you're going to die and rot and there's
not the slightest guarantee which would satisfy anybody but a born fool
that God had any need of us afterwards? You can't even console yourself
with the thought that it's for the good of the race, because that will
die and rot too when the earth grows cold. One has to stake everything
on the flat improbability that service of the truth is a good in itself,
such a good that it's worth while sacrificing one's life to it.

"That's where you've been such a help to me. You had no justification
for supposing that life was worth living. You'd every reason to suppose
that the whole business was foul, and the only sensible thing to do was
to get all the fun one could out of it. If you had determined to be as
little a mother to me as you could I would have understood it,
considering of what I must have reminded you. You'd money, you were
beautiful, you've always been able to attract people. You might so
easily have gone away from here and made a life of your own and just
kept me in th