X OBITUARY 263 



good. Darwin had already shown an aptitude for 

 practical medicine (I. p. 37) ; and his subsequent 

 career proved that he had the making of an 

 excellent anatomist. Thus, though his horror of 

 operations would probably have shut him off from 

 surgery, there was nothing to prevent him (any 

 more than the same peculiarity prevented his 

 father) from passing successfully through the 

 medical curriculum and becoming, like his father 

 and grandfather, a successful physician, in which 

 case " The Origin of Species " would not have been 

 written. Darwin has jestingly alluded to the 

 fact that the shape of his nose (to which Captain 

 Fitzroy objected), nearly prevented his embarka- 

 tion in the " Beagle " ; it may be that the 

 sensitiveness of that organ secured him for 

 science. 



At the end of two years' residence in Edin- 

 burgh it hardly needed Dr. Darwin's sagacity to 

 conclude that a young man, who found nothing 

 but dulness in professorial lucubrations, could not 

 bring himself to endure a dissecting room, fled 

 from operations, and did not need a profession as 

 a means of livelihood, was hardly likely to 

 distinguish himself as a student of medicine. He 

 therefore made a new suggestion, proposing that 

 his son should enter an English University and 

 qualify for the ministry of the Church. Charles 

 Darwin found the proposal agreeable, none the 

 less, probably, that a good deal of natural history 

 46 



