Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - In Vain.djvu/46

34 Thus spoke Vasilkevich. He spoke and panted with excitement.

The point is not in this whether he spoke truth or falsehood; we have repeated the conversation because Yosef, by nature inclined to be practical, took it to heart; he considered, meditated, thought, and chose the medical course.

Happen what may, a man brings to the world certain tendencies.

Yosef's mind was realistic by nature, in some way he clung rather to things than ideas—he had therefore no love for dialectics of any sort. He preferred greatly to see an object as it was, and had no wish to have it seem better than it was. The movement of mind in men's heads is of two sorts: one starts eternally from the centre of existence, the other refers each object to some other. Men of the first kind enter into things already investigated, and give them life by connecting them with the main source of existence by a very slender thread of knowledge. The first are the socalled creative capacities; the second grasp things in some fashion, compare them, classify them, and understand them only through arranging and bringing them into classes,—those are the scientific capacities. The first men