Lydgate is right; or rather, George Eliot is right in writing, from Lydgate's POV, about one's calling to a certain line of work. Lydgate sees knowledge for what it is: "wordy ignorance" that can be mastered with study. He's never been a good student because he hasn't found a particular calling. When he takes down that "dusty row of volumes with grey-paper backs and dingy labels" and discovers, for the first time, that blood enters the heart through valves, he is struck by an ocean of unexplored information. He is struck by the beach. He didn't even know there was a beach beyond the wood of his schooldaze youth. He wandered beyond the wood one day, and through the grey-paper sky he saw a beach, and beyond the dusty row of sand he saw the water, and now he puts his foot in the water and feels the movement of an entire ocean, and beyond that, distant shores and the moon tugging the water and the forces of the universe that are too large for anyone to comprehend while stuck in a wood. That is the discovery of potential. That is a calling.
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