Towards the end of his life, an elderly science lecturer, one of the founders of the secularist movement recalled an interview he held as a young man with the venerable Charles Darwin, whose researches and generalisations completely revolutionised the study of the phenomena of physical life.
Darwin had issued a little treatise on earth-worms, showing their value as agriculturalists, because in their search for vegetable food, they digested or passed the soil through their bodies and deposited a fertile mould one foot deep in every twenty six years. Said the old Doctor: “Wishing to say something smart and pleasing, I looked up into the noble countenance of the venerable scientist and philosopher, and with the cock-sureness of a young man I exclaimed, ‘Why should such a majestic intellect, able to grasp so completely the mighty factors and principles of nature’s working concern itself with the examination of lowly organisms like the earth-worm?’
“Never can I forget the attitude and response of Charles Darwin. Turning to me, with fatherly dignity and reproof, he laid his hands gently on my shoulder and spoke thus with great deliberateness. ‘No fact in nature is too small, too insignificant for observation, for verification, for classification and for generalisation. I spent forty years in the examination of the life history of earth-worms before writing that little treatise.’
As George P. Young, the narrator of this little story says in his little booklet, "The Soul's Deepest Questions," “Only great minds can estimate and apprehend the importance of little things,” or as John Milton so wisely observed in Paradise Lost, “In contemplation of created things, by steps we may ascend to God.”
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