ix] OF EVOLUTION 101 



The reason of this indifference towards his 

 grandfather's works is obvious. All through his life, 

 Darwin, like Lyell, showed a positive distaste for all 

 speculation or theorising that was not based on a 

 good foundation of facts or observations. In this 

 respect, the attitude of Darwin's mind was the very 

 opposite of that of Herbert Spencer who, Huxley 

 jokingly said, would regard as a ' tragedy* 'the 

 killing of a beautiful theory by an ugly fact/ 

 Darwin tells us himself that, while on his first 

 reading of Zoonomia he * greatly admired* it 

 evidently on literary grounds yet 'on reading it a 

 second time after an interval of ten or fifteen years, 

 I was much disappointed ; the proportion of specula- 

 tion being so large to the facts given.' Huxley who 

 knew Charles Darwin so well in later years said of 

 him that : 



' He abhors mere speculation as nature abhors a vacuum. He 

 is as greedy of cases and precedents as any constitutional lawyer, 

 and all the principles he lays down are capable of being brought 

 to the test of observation and experiment 1U V 



What then, we may ask, were the facts and 

 observations which turned Darwin's mind towards 

 the great problem that came to be the work of his 

 after life? I think it is possible from the study of 

 his letters and other published writings to give an 

 answer to this very interesting question. 



