Question

<p>Read the following scene from Act I of a play carefully before answering the question.</p>

<p>ACT I, SCENE III

The study of Dr. Silas Sterling. Bookcases line the walls, packed with leather-bound volumes and botanical specimens in jars. A single green-shaded lamp illuminates a cluttered desk where Silas sits, examining a dried leaf through a magnifying glass. His niece, Beatrice, enters, wearing a travel cloak and carrying a small leather portfolio.</p>

<p>Beatrice: (Setting down the portfolio) I have returned from the archive, Uncle. The letters of the late botanist are exactly as you suspected. They reveal that the discovery of the hybrid fern was not his own, but rather the work of his assistant, who died in obscurity.</p>

<p>Silas: (Without looking up) Ah. And did you secure the transcription of his diary from the winter of 1884? That is the pivot on which our entire monograph turns, Beatrice.</p>

<p>Beatrice: I did. But Silas... the assistant had a family. They live in near-poverty in the valley, while the botanist’s estate continues to collect royalties and praise for a legacy built on theft. If we publish this monograph as you have written it—focusing solely on the taxonomy of the hybrid without exposing the true discoverer—we perpetuate the lie.</p>

<p>Silas: (Laying down the glass and looking at her) We are cataloging nature, Beatrice, not dispensing moral justice. The scientific community cares for the specimen, its classification, and its utility. To drag a dead scholar’s character through the mud would only alienate the Academy. We need their endorsement if our own catalog is to be accepted.</p>

<p>Beatrice: (Quietly) And what of the truth? You taught me that science is the search for truth, clear and unvarnished.</p>

<p>Silas: The truth of the fern, my dear, not the truth of the man. The fern exists; its structure is absolute. The human transactions that brought it to light are messy, transient, and irrelevant to the genus. If we delay our publication to wage a campaign of restitution, Professor Vance will publish his findings first, and our years of labor will be reduced to a footnote in his volume. Is that what you wish?</p>

<p>Beatrice: (Staring at the portfolio) I wish for us to be able to look at our own names on the title page without feeling that we have bought our prominence with another's silence.</p>

In the passage, Silas’s distinction between the "truth of the fern" and the "truth of the man" primarily reveals that his perspective is motivated by a desire to do which of the following?