If the microscope had never been invented, the Story of Animal Life, as
it is related by modern science, could never have been told. It is to
the microscope that we owe our knowledge of innumerable little animals
that are too small to be seen by the unassisted eye; and it is to the
microscope that we owe the most important part of our knowledge about
the bodies of larger animals, about the way in which they are built up,
and the uses of their different parts. The earlier opticians who toiled,
one after another, to bring the microscope to perfection, never dreamed,
in their most ambitious moments, of the value of the gift that their
labour was to confer upon mankind. For the microscope alone has made it
possible for men of science to study the world of living things. This is
the value of honest and thorough work in almost every department of
intellectual labour; that it builds a firm and sure though perhaps
hidden foundation for the loftier and more perfect work of after days.