Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/308



For once Gottlieb did not amble into his laboratory but curtly summoned him. In a corner of Gottlieb's office, a den opening from his laboratory, was Terry Wickett, rolling a cigarette and looking sardonic.

Gottlieb observed, "Martin, I haf taken the privilege of talking you over with Terry, and we concluded that you haf done well enough now so it is time you stop puttering and go to work."

"I thought I was working, sir!"

All the wide placidness of his halcyon days was gone; he saw himself driven back to Pickerbaughism.

Wickett intruded, "No, you haven't. You've just been showing that you're a bright boy who might work if he only knew something."

While Martin turned on Wickett with a "Who the devil are you?" expression, Gottlieb went on:

"The fact is, Martin, you can do nothing till you know a little mathematics. If you are not going to be a cookbook bacteriologist, like most of them, you must be able to handle some of the fundamentals of science. All living things are physico-chemical machines. Then how can you make progress if you do not know physical chemistry, and how can you know physical chemistry without much mathematics?"

"Yuh," said Wickett, "you're lawn-mowing and daisy-picking, not digging."

Martin faced them. "But rats, Wickett, a man can't know everything. I'm a bacteriologist, not a physicist. Strikes me a fellow ought to use his insight, not just a chest of tools, to make discoveries. A good sailor could find his way at sea even if he didn't have instruments, and a whole Lusitania-ful of junk wouldn't make a good sailor out of a dub. Man ought to develop his brain, not depend on tools."

"Ye-uh, but if there were charts and quadrants in existence, a sailor that cruised off without 'em would be a chump!"

For half an hour Martin defended himself, not too politely, before the gem-like Gottlieb, the granite Wickett. All the while he knew that he was sickeningly ignorant.

They ceased to take interest. Gottlieb was looking at his note-books, Wickett was clumping off to work. Martin glared at Gottlieb. The man meant so much that he could be furious