Читать книгу All in the Day's Work: An Autobiography онлайн

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Flower in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies,

I hold you here, root and all, in my hand

Little flower—but if I could understand

What you are, root and all, and all in all,

I should know what God and man is.

It reassured me; I was on the right track, for was I not going to find out with the microscope what God and man are?

Professor Tingley’s method for those he found really interested in scientific study was to encourage them to look outside the book. There was where I had already found my joy; but I suspected it was the willful way, that the true way was to know first what was in the books. Here in Professor Tingley’s classes you were ordered to go and see for yourself. He used to tell us a story of his first experience at Penikese. A stone was put before him, a round water-washed stone, on which he was to report. He looked at the stone, turned it over. There was nothing to report. “It is not the outside, it is the inside of things that matters,” said Agassiz. And in the laboratory that became our watchword: Look inside.