How can I be richer, if I have lying
at my feet all day a thousand times more wealth than I can use?
Some people--most people--in these run-about railway days, would
complain of such a life, in such a 'narrow sphere,' so they call it,
as monotonous. Very likely it is so. But is it to be complained of
on that account? Is monotony in itself an evil? Which is better, to
know many places ill, or to know one place well? Certainly--if a
scientific habit of mind be a gain--it is only by exhausting as far
as possible the significance of an individual phenomenon (is not that
sentence a true scientific one in its magniloquence?) that you can
discover any glimpse of the significance of the universal. Even men
of boundless knowledge, like Humboldt, must have had once their
speciality, their pet subject, or they would have, strictly speaking,
no knowledge at all. The volcanoes of Mexico, patiently and
laboriously investigated in his youth, were to Humboldt, possibly,
the key of the whole Cosmos. I learn more, studying over and over
again the same Bagshot sand and gravel heaps, than I should by
roaming all Europe in search of new geologic wonders.
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