Abstract
AS our general knowledge of nature increases, the possibility of individual knowledge decreases; the variety of discovery, the immense number of investigators, and the innumerable details which they accumulate in their respective branches of science, preclude the possibility of a modern “admirable Crichton.” Werner's sigh, “True I know much, but yet I would know all,” has been long acknowledged as an aspiration incapable of fulfilment, even supposing him to limit his desire of knowledge within the bounds of what is already known. To know “something of everything, and everything of something,” is all that can be hoped for; day by day each science advances with such rapid strides, that one brain is incapable of grasping more than the general principles of one science; and any man who aims at enlarging the domain of science by fresh discovery, must content himself with confining his attention to a small corner, and by patient industry and indomitable perseverance seek to elicit some new facts.
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RAMSAY, W. German Physiological Chemistry 1 . Nature 20, 323–325 (1879). https://doi.org/10.1038/020323a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/020323a0