mysteries to himself will be clear and plain.  But he sees, too, how the dim avenues of knowledge reach out in every direction, interlacing and combining, and when he contrasts the tiny powers of the most subtle brain with all the wide range of law—­for the knowledge which is to be, not invented, but simply discovered, is all assuredly there, secret and complex as it seems—­there is but little room for complacency or pride.  Indeed, I think that a great savant, as a rule, feels that instead of being separated by his store of knowledge, as by a wide space that he has crossed, from smaller minds, he is brought closer to the ignorant by the presence of the vast unknown.  Instead of feeling that he has soared like a rocket away from the ground, he thinks of himself rather as a flower might think whose head was an inch or two higher than a great company of similar flowers; he has perhaps a wider view; he sees the bounding hedgerow, the distant line of hills, whereas the humbler flower sees little but a forest of stems and blooms, with the light falling dimly between.  And a great savant, too, is far more ready to credit other people with a wider knowledge than they possess.  It is the lesser kind of savant, the man of one book, of one province, of one period, who is inclined to think that he is differentiated from the crowd.  The great man is far too much preoccupied with real progress to waste time and energy in showing up the mistakes of others.  It is the lesser kind of savant, jealous of his own reputation, anxious to show his superiority, who loves to censure and deride the feebler brother.  If one ever sees a relentless and pitiless review of a book—­an exposure, as it is called, by one specialist of another’s work—­one may be fairly certain that the critic is a minute kind of person.  Again, the great specialist is never anxious to obtrude his subject; he is rather anxious to hear what is going on in other regions of mental activity, regions which he would like to explore but cannot.  It is the lesser light that desires to dazzle and bewilder his company, to tyrannise, to show off.  It is the most difficult thing to get a great savant to talk about his subject, though, if he is kind and patient, will answer unintelligent questions, and help a feeble mind along, it is one of the most delightful things in the world.  I seized the opportunity some little while ago, on finding myself sitting next to a great physicist, of asking him a series of fumbling questions on the subject of modern theories of matter; for an hour I stumbled like a child, supported by a strong hand, in a dim and unfamiliar world, among the mysterious essences of things.  I should like to try to reproduce it here, but I have no doubt I should reproduce it all wrong.  Still, it was deeply inspiring to look out into chaos, to hear the rush and motion of atoms, moving in vast vortices, to learn that inside the hardest and most impenetrable of substances there was probably a feverish intensity of inner motion.