Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 13.djvu/35

Rh was the only one among them whose views reached far beyond his special field of knowledge, and, for this reason, he knew how to adapt the style of his writings to the requirements of cultivated society.

In conclusion, I should like to draw attention to one thing. None of these four men, who achieved lasting fame in so many different branches of science, had been originally destined for scientific pursuit. What they were and what they achieved were due to themselves and to their iron will. Becquerel had left the Polytechnic School in 1808, in his twentieth year, had become a lieutenant of engineers, had been promoted to the command of a battalion in the Spanish campaigns, and left the service after the battle of Waterloo in order to devote himself to the study of physics; Leverrier and Regnault had originally been clerks in stores, and had studied in their leisure hours until they were able to gain admittance to the Polytechnic School; Claude Bernard had come to Paris with hardly anything in his pocket but a tragedy, and he had first dabbled in literature. Hard, indescribably hard work, untold privations, and struggles of all kinds, enabled these men to attain the high position which they will always hold in the history of science. To them may be applied what one of my friends once said in regard to an eminent savant: "Dans sa jeunesse il a tiré le diable par la queue et mangé de la vache enragée; mais il a réussi, parce qu'il avait le feu sacré!"



HEN we read that Cook "presented the king [of Otaheite] with two large hatchets, some showy beads, a looking-glass, a knife, and some nails;" or when Speke, describing his reception by the King of Uganda, narrates—"I then said I had brought the best shooting-gun in the world—Whitworth's rifle—which I begged he would accept, with a few other trifles"—we are reminded how travelers in general, coming in contact with strange peoples, propitiate them by gifts. Two concomitant results are achieved. There is the immediate gratification caused by the worth of the thing given, which tends to beget a friendly mood in those approached; and there is the tacit expression of a desire to please, which has a like effect. It is from the last of these that the development of gift-making as a ceremony proceeds.

The alliance between mutilations and presents—between offering a part of the body and offering something else—is well shown by a statement of Garcilasso, respecting the ancient Peruvians; which, at the same time, shows how present-making becomes a propitiatory act apart