"Well,not too popular,I smiled."I think it would do me good to use my mind,to chew on something.Besides,you can help me over the tough places."He returned that afternoon with two books.
"I've been rather fortunate in getting these,"he said."One is fairly elementary.They had it at the library.And the other--"he paused delicately,"I didn't know whether you might be interested in the latest speculations on the subject.""Speculations?"I repeated.
"Well,the philosophy of it."He almost achieved a blush under his tan.
He held out the second book on the philosophy of the organism."It's the work of a German scientist who stands rather high.I read it last winter,and it interested me.I got it from a clergyman I know who is spending the winter in Santa Barbara.""A clergyman!"Strafford laughed."An 'advanced'clergyman,"he explained."Oh,a lot of them are reading science now.I think it's pretty decent of them."I looked at Strafford,who towered six feet three,and it suddenly struck me that he might be one of the forerunners of a type our universities were about to turn out.I wondered what he believed.Of one thing I was sure,that he was not in the medical profession to make money.That was a faith in itself.
I began with the elementary work.
"You'd better borrow a Century Dictionary,"I said.
"That's easy,"he said,and actually achieved it,with the clergyman's aid.
The absorption in which I fought my way through those books may prove interesting to future generations,who,at Sunday-school age,when the fable of Adam and Eve was painfully being drummed into me (without any mention of its application),will be learning to think straight,acquiring easily in early youth what I failed to learn until after forty.
And think of all the trouble and tragedy that will have been averted.It is true that I had read some biology at Cambridge,which I had promptly forgotten;it had not been especially emphasized by my instructors as related to life--certainly not as related to religion:such incidents as that of Adam and Eve occupied the religious field exclusively.I had been compelled to commit to memory,temporarily,the matter in those books;but what I now began to perceive was that the matter was secondary compared to the view point of science--and this had been utterly neglected.As I read,I experienced all the excitement of an old-fashioned romance,but of a romance of such significance as to touch the very springs of existence;and above all I was impressed with the integrity of the scientific method--an integrity commensurate with the dignity of man--that scorned to quibble to make out a case,to affirm something that could not be proved.