rceiving that he was carrying out
a long and patient process, the layman would be fuming, and thinking,
in great perturbation: "What am I doing here? I cannot waste time like
this." When microscopists expect visits from a lay public, they
prepare a long row of microscopes already in focus, because they know
that their visitors will wish to see "at once" and "quickly," and that
they will wish to see "a great deal."

We can easily imagine a scientist whose contributions to the work of
the laboratory are of the highest order, who holds chairs and
possesses civil dignities and honors of every sort, amiably consenting
to show a lady a cellular tissue under the microscope. As if it were
the most natural thing in the world, he would proceed as follows, with
solemn and serene gravity. He would cut off a minute portion of a
piece of tissue preserved in spirit, and would carefully clean the
slide on which the subject was to be placed and the slide that was to
cover it; he would clean again the lenses of the microscope, focus the
preparation, and make ready to explain. But undoubtedly the lady all
this time will have been on the point of saying a hundred times:
"Excuse me, Professor, but really ... I have an engagement ... I have
a great deal to do...." When she has looked without seeing anything,
her lamentations are bitter: "What a lot of time I have wasted!" And
yet she has nothing to do, and fritters away all her time! What she
lacks is not time but patience. He who is impatient cannot appraise
things properly; he can only appreciate his own impulses and his own
satisfactions. He reckons time solely by his own activity. That which
satisfies him may be absolutely empty, valueless, nugatory; no matter,
its value lies in the satisfaction it gives him; and if it gives him
satisfaction, it cannot be said to be a waste of time. But what he
cannot endure, and what impresses him as a loss of time is a tension
of the nerves, a moment of self-control, an interval of waiting
without an immediate result There is, indeed, a popular Italian
proverb: _aspettare e non venire e una cosa da morire_ (to wait for
what does not come is a killing business). These impatient persons
are like those busybodies who always make off when there is really
work to be done.

A thorough _education_ is indeed necessary to overcome this attitude;
we must master and control our own wills, if we would bring ourselves
into relation with the external world and app