320 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



servation," he wrote to Wallace. Still more interesting is the fact 

 that the inheritance of his grandfather's tendency toward speculation 

 took the direction of evolution, for before the close of the eighteenth 

 century Erasmus Darwin gave the world in poetical form his belief 

 in a complete evolutionary system as well as the first clear exposition 

 of what is now known as the Lamarckian hypothesis. But in the 

 grandson hypotheses were constantly held in check by the determina- 

 tion to put each to the severe test of observation. Darwin speaks of 

 his father, Eobert, as the most acute observer he ever saw, and attrib- 

 utes to him his intense desire to understand the reasons of things; 

 from him came caution and conservatism. He says in his " Auto- 

 biography " : 



I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any 

 hypothesis (however much beloved), and I can not resist forming one on every 

 subject, as soon as facts are sho\vn to be opposed to it. 



If the " poet is born not made," the man of science is surely both 

 born and made. Bare as was Darwin's genius, it was not more rare 

 than the wonderful succession of outward events which shaped his life. 

 It is true that Darwin believed with his cousin Francis Gal ton that 

 education and environment produce only a small effect upon the mind 

 of any one, but Darwin underestimated the force of his educational 

 advantages just as he underestimated his own powers, and this because 

 he thought only of his book and classroom life at school, at Edinburgh 

 and at Cambridge, and not of his broader life. It was true in 1817, 

 as to-day, that few teachers teach and few educators educate. It is 

 true that those were the dull days of classical and mathematical drill. 

 Yet look at the roster of Cambridge and see the men it produced. 

 From Darwin's regular college work he may have gained biit little, 

 yet he was all the while enjoying an exceptional training. Step by 

 step he was made a strong man by a mental guidance which is without 

 parallel, by the precepts and example of his father, for whom he held 

 the greatest reverence, by his reading of the poetry of Shakespeare, 

 Wordsworth, Coleridge and Milton, and the scientific prose of J'aley, 

 Herschel and Humboldt, by the subtle scholarly influences of old Cam- 

 bridge, by the scientific inspiration and advice of Henslow, by the mas- 

 terful inductive influence of the geologist Lyell, and by the great 

 nature panorama of the voyage of the Beagle. 



The college mates of Darwin saw more truly than he himself what 

 the old university was doing for him. Professor Poulton of Oxford, 

 believes that the kind of life which so favored Darwin's mind has 

 largely disappeared in English universities, especially under the sharp 

 system of competitive examinations; yet this is still more truly the 

 atmosphere of old Cambridge to-day than of any of our American 

 colleges. It would be an interesting subject to debate whether we 



