"
"I don't know that; they have to me, for instance. These are the
things which I would write about if I had any turn for verse, not
about human nature, of which I know, I'm afraid, a little too much
already. I always like to read old 'Darwin's Loves of the Plants;'
bosh as it is in a scientific point of view, it amuses one's fancy
without making one lose one's temper, as one must when one begins to
analyse the microscopic ape called self and friends.
"You would like, then, the old Cosmogonies, the Eddas and the Vedas,"
said Elsley, getting interested, as most people did after five
minutes' talk with the cynical doctor. "I suppose you would not say
much for their science; but, as poetry, they are just what you ask
for--the expression of thoughtful spirits, who looked round upon
nature with awe-struck, childlike eyes, and asked of all heaven and
earth the question, 'What are you? How came you to be?' Yet--it may be
my fault--while I admire them, I cannot sympathise with them. To me,
this zoophyte is as a being of another sphere; and till I can create
some link in my own mind between it and humanity it is as nothing in
my eyes."
"There is link enough, sir, don't doubt, and chains of iron and brass
too."
"You believe then, in the development theory of the 'Vestiges'?"
"Doctors who have their bread to earn never commit themselves to
theories. No; all I meant was, that this little zoophyte lives by the
same laws as you and I; and that he, and the sea-weeds, and so forth,
teach us doctors certain little rules concerning life and death, which
you will have a chance soon of seeing at work on the most grand and
poetical, and indeed altogether tragic scale.
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