How I Found Livingstone Travels, Adventures And Discoveries In Central Africa Including Four Months Residence With Dr. Livingstone By Sir Henry M. Stanley
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His
Whole Life Is A Testimony Against Its Unreliability, And His
Entire Labor Of Years Were In Vain If Theory Can Be Taken In
Evidence Against Personal Observation And Patient Investigation.
The reluctance he manifests to entertain suppositions,
possibilities regarding the nature, form, configuration of concrete
immutable matter like the
Earth, arises from the fact, that a man
who commits himself to theories about such an untheoretical subject
as Central Africa is deterred from bestirring himself to prove them
by the test of exploration. His opinion of such a man is, that he
unfits himself for his duty, that he is very likely to become a
slave to theory - a voluptuous fancy, which would master him.
It is his firm belief, that a man who rests his sole knowledge of
the geography of Africa on theory, deserves to be discredited. It
has been the fear of being discredited and criticised and so made
to appear before the world as a man who spent so many valuable
years in Africa for the sake of burdening the geographical mind
with theory that has detained him so long in Africa, doing his
utmost to test the value of the main theory which clung to him,
and would cling to him until he proved or disproved it.
This main theory is his belief that in the broad and mighty
Lualaba he has discovered the head waters of the Nile. His grounds
for believing this are of such nature and weight as to compel him
to despise the warning that years are advancing on him, and his
former iron constitution is failing.
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