There was little
reading or general relaxation during the day: certainly not before
supper, if at all. And while no fixed hours for work were laid down, the
custom was general that all hours between breakfast and supper should be
so used.
Our small company was desperately keen to obtain results. The youngest
and most cynical pessimist must have had cause for wonder to see a body
of healthy and not unintellectual men striving thus single-mindedly to
add their small quota of scientific and geographical knowledge to the sum
total of the world--with no immediate prospect of its practical utility.
Laymen and scientists alike were determined to attain the objects to gain
which they had set forth.
And I believe that in a vague intangible way there was an ideal in front
of and behind this work. It is really not desirable for men who do not
believe that knowledge is of value for its own sake to take up this kind
of life. The question constantly put to us in civilization was and still
is: "What is the use? Is there gold? or Is there coal?" The commercial
spirit of the present day can see no good in pure science: the English
manufacturer is not interested in research which will not give him a
financial return within one year: the city man sees in it only so much
energy wasted on unproductive work: truly they are bound to the wheel of
conventional life.
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