There are warehouses in London that are choked
to the beams of the roof with them, and every fresh exploration furnishes
another shelf-load.
The source of the Nile was unknown a very few years
ago, and now, I have no doubt, there are dozens of monographs on the
flowers that flourish there. Indeed, there is not a thing that grows that
may not furnish a monograph. The author spends perhaps twenty years in
collecting his material, during which time he must of course come across
a great variety of amusing information, and then he spends another ten
years writing out a fair copy of his labours. Then he thinks it does not
quite do in that form, so he snips a paragraph out of the beginning and
puts it at the end; next he shifts some more matter from the middle to
the preface; then he thinks it over. It seems to him that it is too big,
it wants condensation. The scientific world will say he has made too much
of it; it ought to read very slight, and present the facts while
concealing the labour. So he sets about removing the superfluous - leaves
out all the personal observations, and all the little adventures he has
met with in his investigations; and so, having got it down to the dry
bones and stones thereof and omitted all the mortar that stuck them
together, he sends for the engraver, and the next three years are
occupied in working up the illustrations. About this time some new
discovery is made by a foreign observer, which necessitates a complete
revision of the subject; and so having shifted the contents of the book
about hither and thither till he does not know which is the end and which
is the beginning, he pitches the much-mutilated copy into a drawer and
turns the key. Farewell, no more of this; his declining days shall be
spent in peace. A few months afterwards a work is announced in Leipsic
which 'really trenches on my favourite subject, and really after spending
a lifetime I can't stand it.' By this time his handwriting has become so
shaky he can hardly read it himself, so he sends in despair for a lady
who works a type-writer, and with infinite patience she makes a clean
manuscript of the muddled mass. To the press at last, and the proofs come
rapidly. Such a relief! How joyfully easy a thing is when you set about
it! but by-and-by this won't do. Sub-section A ought to be in a
foot-note, family B is doubtful; and so the corrections grow and run over
the margin in a thin treble hand, till they approach the bulk of the
original book - a good profit for the printer; and so after about forty
years the monograph is published - the work of a life is accomplished.
Fifty copies are sent round to as many public libraries and learned
societies, and the rest of the impression lies on the shelves till dust
and time and spiders' webs have buried it. Splendid work in it too.
Looked back upon from to-day with the key of modern thought, these
monographs often contain a whole chest of treasure. And still there are
the periodicals, a century of magazines and journals and reviews and
notices that have been coming out these hundred years and dropping to the
ground like dead leaves unnoticed. And then there are the art
works - books about shape and colour and ornament, and a naturalist lately
has been trying to see how the leaves of one tree look fitted on the
boughs of another. Boundless is the wealth of Flora's lap; the ingenuity
of man has been weaving wreaths out of it for ages, and still the bottom
of the sack is not yet. Nor have we got much news of the dandelion. For I
sit on the thrown timber under the trees and meditate, and I want
something more: I want the soul of the flowers.
The bee and the butterfly take their pollen and their honey, and the
strange moths so curiously coloured, like the curious colouring of the
owls, come to them by night, and they turn towards the sun and live their
little day, and their petals fall, and where is the soul when the body
decays? I want the inner meaning and the understanding of the wild
flowers in the meadow. Why are they? What end? What purpose? The plant
knows, and sees, and feels; where is its mind when the petal falls?
Absorbed in the universal dynamic force, or what? They make no shadow of
pretence, these beautiful flowers, of being beautiful for my sake, of
bearing honey for me; in short, there does not seem to be any kind of
relationship between us, and yet - as I said just now - language does not
express the dumb feelings of the mind any more than the flower can speak.
I want to know the soul of the flowers, but the word soul does not in the
smallest degree convey the meaning of my wish. It is quite inadequate; I
must hope that you will grasp the drift of my meaning. All these
life-laboured monographs, these classifications, works of Linnaeus, and
our own classic Darwin, microscope, physiology, and the flower has not
given us its message yet. There are a million books; there are no books:
all the books have to be written. What a field! A whole million of books
have got to be written. In this sense there are hardly a dozen of them
done, and these mere primers. The thoughts of man are like the
foraminifera, those minute shells which build up the solid chalk hills
and lay the level plain of endless sand; so minute that, save with a
powerful lens, you would never imagine the dust on your fingers to be
more than dust. The thoughts of man are like these:
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