The Einstein Girl by Philip Sington

Author:Philip Sington
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409079187
Publisher: Vintage Digital

the writer

Twenty-seven

So it was that I began to study not for the praise or good opinion of others, but for the independence I thought it could give me. My studies were soon my life. They gave me refuge as well as occupation, for when I was sunk in my books I felt myself not alone, but in company: a company of enlightened souls whose passion was the enlightenment of others. I felt privileged to eavesdrop on the discourse of these great minds, and sometimes resented the intrusions of daily life. I can admit this to you because I know you will understand the temptations of a scholarly existence. Sometimes I think if I had not taken that road, a tumult of emotions might have overwhelmed me. Anger, sorrow and loneliness lay in wait on every side. I had only to stray a step or two from the path and I would be lost to them, and to despair. For what use are the tears of a few gentle souls against the cruelty of so many?

Yet I was not happy. I took pride in my accomplishments, all the more so as they were rare for a young person of my sex, but I did not see the worth of prizes. I wanted my learning to make me happier, and others whom I cared for, and I wanted that happiness to endure. Until then, my successes had served only to isolate me. The girls at school thought me boyish and strange, with my pursuit of mathematics and science; the boys regarded me as an upstart. I believe I was therefore receptive to the notion that learning might at least bring me closer to God.

Not that I received this suggestion in church. I had the impression that, if anything, ministers of religion regarded too much learning with suspicion, especially those kinds that touched upon the natural world. God and his Great Plan were mysteries beyond the reach of human reason, they said. There was a presumption in mortal men propounding on the subject of natural law. Faith was the quality that mattered – blind or otherwise, it made no difference. All the learning in the world, they reminded me repeatedly, did not bring a soul one step closer to the Kingdom of Heaven, unless it was a learning of the scriptures.

Fortunately, there were teachers at the gymnasium who had a different opinion of science. My last teacher of physics, Dr Stanić, suggested that God and the laws of nature were one and the same, since the character of the universe was an expression of natural law, and all things subject to it. So in understanding better natural laws, how could we fail to understand God better? In this way he placed a new prize before me. I saw that the pathway of learning and investigation led not only to understanding, but to the source of all goodness and love.

These words were a great comfort to me, and a spur. My father never had

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