Osler discusses the 'Snark' as the 'true student' and the 'Boojum' as the imposter. It is a reference to Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem, 'The Hunting of the Snark,' in which a crew sets sail to find the fictional creature. In the end, the crew catch what they think is a Snark but which turns out to be a Boojum, a dangerous creature that causes its hunter to fade away. How else might this tale relate to the student and his journey?

Read the passage and answer questions: Except it be a lover, no one is more interesting as an object of study than a student. Shakespeare might have made him a fourth in his immortal group. The lunatic with his fixed idea, the poet with his fine frenzy, the lover with his frantic idolatry, and the student aflame with the desire for knowledge are of 'imagination all compact.' To an absorbing passion, a whole-souled devo- tion, must be joined an enduring energy, if the student is to become a devotee of the gray-eyed goddess to whose law his services are bound. Like the quest of the Holy... Show more

Read the passage and answer questions:

Except it be a lover, no one is more interesting as an object of study than a student. Shakespeare might have made him a fourth in his immortal group. The lunatic with his fixed idea, the poet with his fine frenzy, the lover with his frantic idolatry, and the student aflame with the desire for knowledge are of 'imagination all compact.' To an absorbing passion, a whole-souled devo- tion, must be joined an enduring energy, if the student is to become a devotee of the gray-eyed goddess to whose law his services are bound.
Like the quest of the Holy Grail, the quest of Minerva is not for all. For the one, the pure life; for the other, what Milton calls 'a strong pro- pensity of nature.' Here again the student often resembles the poet—he is born, not made. While the resultant of two molding forces, the accidental, external conditions, and the hidden germinal energies, which produce in each one of us national, family, and individual traits, the true student possesses in some measure a divine spark which sets at naught their laws.
Like the Snark, he defies definition, but there are three unmistakable signs by which you may recognize the genuine article from a Boojum— an absorbing desire to know the truth, an unswerving steadfastness in its pursuit, and an open, honest heart, free from suspicion, guile, and jealousy.
At the outset do not be worried about this big question—Truth. It is a very simple matter if each one of you starts with the desire to get as much as possible. No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition. In this unsatisfied quest the attitude of mind, the desire, the thirst—a thirst that from the soul must rise!—the fervent longing, are the be-all and the end-all. What is the student but a lover courting a fickle mistress who ever eludes his grasp? In this very elusiveness is brought out his second great characteristic—steadfastness of purpose. Unless from the start the limitations incident to our frail human faculties are frankly accepted, nothing but disappointment awaits you. The truth is the best you can get with your best endeavor, the best that the best men accept—with this you must learn to be satisfied, retaining at the same time with due humility an earnest desire for an ever larger portion. Only by keeping the mind plastic and receptive does the student escape perdition. It is not, as Charles Lamb remarks, that some people do not know what to do with truth when it is offered to them, but the tragic fate is to reach, after years of patient search, a condition of mind-blindness in which the truth is not recog- nized, though it stares you in the face. This can never happen to a man who has followed step by step the growth of a truth, and who knows the painful phases of its evolution. It is one of the great tragedies of life that every truth has to struggle to acceptance against honest but mind- blind students. Harvey knew his contemporaries well, and for twelve successive years demonstrated the circulation of the blood before daring to publish the facts on which the truth was based.
Only steadfastness of purpose and humil- ity enable the student to shift his position to meet the new conditions in which new truths are born, or old ones modified beyond recogni- tion. And, thirdly, the honest heart will keep him in touch with his fellow students, and fur- nish that sense of comradeship without which he travels an arid waste alone.
- excerpt from The Student Life by William Osler     Show less