have surprised three secrets that are more than technical discoveries,
in the unexpected hiding-places of Nature. I have come nearer flying
than any man has done. Could I have done as much if I had had a turn for
obeying those rather mediocre professors at the college who proposed
to train my mind? If I had been trained in research--that ridiculous
contradiction in terms--should I have done more than produce additions
to the existing store of little papers with blunted conclusions, of
which there are already too many? I see no sense in mock modesty upon
this matter. Even by the standards of worldly success I am, by the side
of my fellow-students, no failure. I had my F.R.S. by the time I was
thirty-seven, and if I am not very wealthy poverty is as far from me as
the Spanish Inquisition. Suppose I had stamped down on the head of my
wandering curiosity, locked my imagination in a box just when it wanted
to grow out to things, worked by so-and-so's excellent method and
so-and-so's indications, where should I be now?

I may be all wrong in this. It may be I should be a far more efficient
man than I am if I had cut off all those divergent expenditures of
energy, plugged up my curiosity about society with more currently
acceptable rubbish or other, abandoned Ewart, evaded Marion instead of
pursuing her, concentrated. But I don't believe it!

However, I certainly believed it completely and was filled with remorse
on that afternoon when I sat dejectedly in Kensington Gardens and
reviewed, in the light of the Registrar's pertinent questions my first
two years in London.



CHAPTER THE SECOND