Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/38

22 The healthy eye does not more naturally turn to the light, than the honest mind turns towards the truth. See how we seek after it in nature. All the National Academies, Institutes, and Royal Societies are but so many companies organized for the pursuit of truth,—of truth chiefly in some outward form, materialized in the visible world. These societies propose no corporeal benefit to themselves, none to the human race. They love each truth of nature for its own fair sake. What is the pecuniary value of the satellites of Neptune to us? See how laborious naturalists ransack the globe to learn the truths writ in its elements. One goes to Florida to look after the bones of a mastodon, hid in a bog some thousands of years ago; another curiously collects chips of stone from all the ledges of the world, lives and moves and has his being in the infra-carboniferous sandstones and shales, a companion of fossil plants and fossil shells. This crosses land and ocean to study the herbage of the earth; that, careless of ease and homefelt joys, devotes his life to mosses and lichens, which grow unheeded on the rocks; he loves them as if they were his own children, yet they return no corresponding smile, nor can he eat and drink of them. How the astronomer loves to learn the truth of the stars, which will not light his fire nor fill his children's hungry mouths! No Inquisition can stop Galileo in his starry quest. I have known a miser who loved money above all things; for this, would sacrifice reason, conscience, and religion, and break affection's bond; but it was the use of money that was loved, with a mean and most ignoble selfish lust, vulgarizing and depraving the man. The true disciple of science loves truth far more, with a disinterested love; will endure toil, privation, and self-denial, and encounter suffering, for that. This love of truth will bless the lover all his days; yet when he brings her home, his fair-faced bride, she comes empty-handed to his door, herself her only dower.

How carefully men look after the facts of human history! how they study the tragic tale of Greece and Rome, and explore the remains of nations that long since have perished from the earth ! Of what material consequence is it to us who composed the Iliad, twenty-five hundred years ago, or whether Homer wrote, or only sung, his