"I suppose you would not say much for their science; but, as poetry, they are just what you ask for--the expression of thoughtful spirits, who looked round upon nature with awe-struck, childlike eyes, and asked of all heaven and earth the question, 'What are you?
How came you to be ?' Yet--it may be my fault--while I admire them, I cannot sympathise with them.

To me, this zoophyte is as a being of another sphere; and till I can create some link in my own mind between it and humanity it is as nothing in my eyes." "There is link enough, sir, don't doubt, and chains of iron and brass too." "You believe then, in the development theory of the 'Vestiges' ?" "Doctors who have their bread to earn never commit themselves to theories.

No; all I meant was, that this little zoophyte lives by the same laws as you and I; and that he, and the sea-weeds, and so forth, teach us doctors certain little rules concerning life and death, which you will have a chance soon of seeing at work on the most grand and poetical, and indeed altogether tragic scale." "What do you mean ?" "When the cholera comes here as it will, at its present pace, before the end of the summer, then I shall have the zoophytes rising up in judgment against me, if I have not profited by a leaf out of their book." "The cholera ?" said Elsley in a startled voice, forgetting Tom's parables in the new thought.

For Elsley had a dread more nervous than really coward of infectious diseases; and he had also (and prided himself, too, on having) all Goethe's dislike of anything terrible or horrible, of sickness, disease, wounds, death, anything which jarred with that "beautiful" which was his idol.
"The cholera ?" repeated he.

"I hope not; I wish you had not mentioned it, Mr.Thurnall." "I am very sorry that I did so, if it offends you.