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Show I should like to invent useful machinery, but it comes, "You do not wish to spend your lifetime among machines and you will die ere you can do anything else." Before the industrial accident which nearly blinded him in 1867, Muir had already suspected that his interest in machines was an obsession which would lead to disaster, be it a slow wasting away of his life, or a quick maiming. It was one thing to argue the value of spectacles, and another to blind oneself in a machine shop. He knew there was another path for him. "How intensely I desire to be a Humboldt!" he had written once. Since 1862, he had been increasingly fascinated with botany, and was encouraged in this pursuit most of all by Jeanne Carr. During the years between 1862 and 1867, he had realized that he couldn't do everything. If he spent all his time thinking, then he scarcely had any time for seeing. When working on new machinery, he wrote, "my mind seems to so bury itself in the work that I am fit for but little else." In 1867, he must have realized, as a shock, that he had been blinding himself all along. He had been given only one life, and he would have to choose where it would lead. He could not be an inventor and a botanist at the same time. The trouble with botany, though, was that it seemed to be quite irrelevant to the realm of human society. It was a hobby, particularly as he liked to pursue it, wandering in the fields, and forgetting everything else. If he chose to become a Humboldt, who would approve of him? Perhaps he could not avoid being true to his own impulses, but he would feel a tremendous need to justify himself. This |