400 THREE CENTURIES' PERSPECTIVES
new conceptual structures. No hunt can have a sweeter reward, a
more admirable goal, than the excitement of thoroughly revised
understanding—the inward journey that thrills real scholars and
scares the bejesus out of the rest of us. We need to make such an
internal expedition in reconceptualizing our views of human gene-
alogy and the meaning of evolutionary diversity. Thomas Browne—
for we must award him the last word—praised such inward adven-
tures above all other intellectual excitement. Interestingly, in the
same passage, he also invoked Africa as a metaphor for unknown
wonder. He could not have known the uncanny literal accuracy of
his words (from Religio Medici, Book 1, Section 15):
I could never content my contemplation with those general pieces of won-
der, the flux and reflux of the sea, the increase of Nile, the conversion of
the [compass] needle to the north; and have studied to match and parallel
those in the more obvious and neglected pieces of nature, which without
further travel I can do in the cosmography of myself; we carry with us the
wonders we seek without us: there is all Africa and her prodigies in us; we
are that bold and adventurous piece of nature.