" The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.  I am not speaking, of course, of the beauty which strikes the senses, of the beauty of qualities and appearances. I am far from despising this, but it has nothing to do with science. What I mean is that more intimate beauty which comes from the harmonious order of its parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp. Nature gives a form, a framework - so to speak, to the shimmering manifestation that charm our senses. Without it, the beauty of these fugitive dreams would be imperfect, hesitant, always elusive. Intellectual beauty is self contained. This, more than toiling for the betterment of humanity, may be the reason why scholars condemn themselves to long and arduous undertaking "