Book Two The Birth of the Butterfly Chapter 5 The Finding of the Bacillus

"In science? Bah!"

"Why not? There was Mary Somerville and--and--and Caroline Herschel and-- well, I can't think of their names all in a minute, but I'm proud to be one of the girls here anyway."

"You are not one of t'em," he cried angrily. "T'ey are life failures. You fancy t'ey are selected examples, but t'ey are not; t'ey are t'e rejected. T'ey stood in t'e market place and no man vanted t'em; or else t'ey are fools as vell as failures and sent t'e men avay. You know me. I am biologist, not true? I hate t'e vord. I am physiologist, student of t'e nature of life--all kinds of life, t'e ocean of life of v'ich man is but a petty incident."

"You were speaking about--"

"Ach, so! Almost t'ou has t'e scientific mind t'at reasons and remembers. I said, I am physiologist. I study v'at Nature is, v'at she means to do. V'en Nature--Gott, if you vant a shorter name--makes a mistake, Gott says: 'Poor material; spoiled in shaping, wrong in t'e vorks; all failures; t'row t'em avay. Ve haf plenty more to go on vit'. You know. You study Nature, also, a little. You know she is law, she is power. To t'e indifidual pitiless, she mofes vit' blind, discompassionate majesty ofer millions of mangled organisms to t'e greater glory of Pan, of Kosmos, of t'e Universe. She vastes life. And how not? Her best vork lives a little v'ile and produces its kind, and t'e vorst does not, and t'ey go down t'e dark vay toget'er and Nature neit'er veeps nor relents Kosmos is greater t'an t'e indifidual and a million years are short.