Chapter 5 - Page 2

or for submarine telegraphs. Now, the man who happens to
take up butterflies does not make a fortune out of his hobby--there is
no money in butterflies; so we say, accordingly, he is an unpractical
person, who cares nothing for business, and who is only happy when he is
out in the fields with a net, chasing emperors and tortoise-shells. But
the man who happens to fancy submarine telegraphy most likely invents a
lot of new improvements, takes out dozens of patents, finds money flow
in upon him as he sits in his study, and becomes at last a peer and a
millionaire; so then we say, What a splendid business head he has got,
to be sure, and how immensely he differs from his poor wool-gathering
brother, the entomologist, who can only invent new ways of hatching
out wire-worms! Yet all may really depend on the first chance direction
which led one brother as a boy to buy a butterfly net, and sent the
other into the school laboratory to dabble with an electric wheel and a
cheap battery."

"Then you mean to say it is chance that has made Sebastian?"

Hilda shook her pretty head. "By no means. Don't be so stupid. We both
know Sebastian has a wonderful brain. Whatever was the work he undertook
with that brain in science, he would carry it out consummately. He is a
born thinker. It is like this, don't you know." She tried to arrange her
thoughts. "The particular branch of science to which Mr. Hiram Maxim's
mind happens to have been directed was the making of machine-guns--and
he slays his thousands. The particular branch to which Sebastian's mind
happens to have been directed was medicine--and he cures as many as Mr.
Maxim kills. It is a turn of the hand that makes all the difference."

"I see," I said. "The aim of medicine happens to be a benevolent one."

"Quite so; that's just what I mean. The aim is benevolent; and Sebastian
pursues that aim with the single-minded energy of a lofty, gifted, and
devoted nature--but not a good one!'

"Not good?"

"Oh, no. To be quite frank, he seems to me to pursue it ruthlessly,
cruelly, unscrupulously. He is a man of high ideals, but without
principle. In that respect he reminds one of the great spirits of the
Italian Renaissance--Benvenuto Cellini and so forth--men who could pore
for hours with conscientious artistic care over the detail of a hem in a
sculptured robe, yet could steal out in the midst of their disinterested
toil to plunge a knife in the back of a rival."

"Sebastian would not do that," I cried. "He is wholly free from the mean
spirit of jealousy."

"No, Sebastian would not do that. You are quite right there; there is
no tinge of