Not to the born naturalist, I admit.  But what do we mean by a born naturalist?  We mean a man in whom the zeal for observing nature is so uncommonly strong and eminent, that it marks him off from the bulk of mankind.  Such a man will pass his life happily in collecting natural knowledge and reasoning upon it, and will ask for nothing, or hardly anything, more.  I have heard it said that the sagacious and admirable naturalist whom we lost not very long ago, Mr. Darwin, once owned to a friend that for his part he did not experience the necessity for two things which most men find so necessary to them,—­religion and poetry; science and the domestic affections, he thought, were enough.  To a born naturalist, I can well understand that this should seem so.  So absorbing is his occupation with nature, so strong his love for his occupation, that he goes on acquiring natural knowledge and reasoning upon it, and has little time or inclination for thinking about getting it related to the desire in man for conduct, the desire in man for beauty.  He relates it to them for himself as he goes along, so far as he feels the need; and he draws from the domestic affections all the additional solace necessary.  But then Darwins are extremely rare.  Another great and admirable master of natural knowledge, Faraday, was a Sandemanian.[129].  That is to say, he related his knowledge to his instinct for conduct and to his instinct for beauty, by the aid of that respectable Scottish sectary, Robert Sandeman.  And so strong, in general, is the demand of religion and poetry to have their share in a man, to associate themselves with his knowing, and to relieve and rejoice it, that, probably, for one man amongst us with the disposition to do as Darwin did in this respect, there are at least fifty with the disposition to do as Faraday.

Education lays hold upon us, in fact, by satisfying this demand.  Professor Huxley holds up to scorn mediaeval education, with its neglect of the knowledge of nature, its poverty even of literary studies, its formal logic devoted to “showing how and why that which the Church said was true must be true.”  But the great mediaeval Universities were not brought into being, we may be sure, by the zeal for giving a jejune and contemptible education.  Kings have been their nursing fathers, and queens have been their nursing mothers, but not for this.  The mediaeval Universities came into being, because the supposed knowledge, delivered by Scripture and the Church, so deeply engaged men’s hearts, by so simply, easily, and powerfully relating itself to their desire for conduct, their desire for beauty.  All other knowledge was dominated by this supposed knowledge and was subordinated to it, because of the surpassing strength of the hold which it gained upon the affections of men, by allying itself profoundly with their sense for conduct, their sense for beauty.