The Lady Sleuths MEGAPACK TM(81)
I laughed at her comical face, she looked at me so quizzically. “But then,” I objected, “the cases are not parallel. Bates kills and collects his lady-birds; Sebastian cures and benefits humanity.”
Hilda smiled her wise smile once more, and fingered her apron. “Are the cases so different as you suppose?” she went on, with her quick glance. “Is it not partly accident? A man of science, you see, early in life, takes up, half by chance, this, that, or the other particular form of study. But what the study is in itself, I fancy, does not greatly matter; do not mere circumstances as often as not determine it? Surely it is the temperament, on the whole, that tells: the temperament that is or is not scientific.”
“How do you mean? You are so enigmatic!”
“Well, in a family of the scientific temperament, it seems to me, one brother may happen to go in for butterflies—may he not?—and another for geology, 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 meanness in the man’s nature. He likes to be first in the field; but he would acclaim with delight another man’s scientific triumph—if another anticipated him; for would it not mean a triumph for universal science?—and is not the advancement of science Sebastian’s religion? But…he would do almost as much, or more. He would stab a man without remorse, if he thought that by stabbing him he could advance knowledge.”