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i [I. ]   ORIGIN OF TASTE FOE SCIENCE.   231

be deficient, success becomes impossible, unless its absence be appropriately supplemented by other qualities or conditions. Cases may be specified, in which too few of the above-mentioned qualities were present, and which consequently ended in an abortive career. One, is the possession of energy, health, and independence of character in excess, and little else to control them. These are dangerous gifts. Those who have them are apt to renounce guidances by which the great body of mankind move safely, and to follow out a career in which they are almost certain to blunder and fail egregiously. Probably every large emigrant ship takes out many such men, full of unjustifiable selfconfidence, who, to use a current phrase, " knock about in the world," waste their health, youth, and opportunities, and end broken down. Another case, is that in which a strong innate taste for science is accompanied by independence of character and steadiness of pursuit, but with no other quality helpful to success, and which therefore leads to no useful result. There is hardly a village where some