“You see, I went on with this research just the way it led me. That is the only way I ever heard of true research going. I asked a question, devised some method of obtaining an answer, and got a fresh question. Was this possible or that possible? You cannot imagine what this means to an investigator, what an intellectual passion grows upon him! You cannot imagine the strange, colourless delight of these intellectual desires! The thing before you is no longer an animal, a fellow-creature, but a problem! Sympathetic pain⁠—all I know of it I remember as a thing I used to suffer from years ago. I wanted⁠—it was the one thing I wanted⁠—to find out the extreme limit of plasticity in a living shape.”

“But,” said I, “the thing is an abomination⁠—”