LIFE AND WORKS OF DARWIN 323 



could nurture such a man ; whether a Darwin, were he entered at a 

 Columbia, a Harvard, a Princeton, could develop mentally as Charles 

 Darwin did at Cambridge in 1817. I believe that conditions for the 

 favorable nurture of such a mind are not with us. They are, repose, 

 time for continuous thought, respect for the man of brains and of 

 individuality and of such peculiar tastes as Darwin displayed in his 

 avidity for collecting beetles, freedom from mental convention, general 

 sympathy for nature, and above all ardor in the world of ideas. If the 

 genial mind can not find the kindred mind it can not develop. Many 

 American school and college men are laughed out of the finest prompt- 

 ings of their natures. In short I believe our intellectual environ- 

 ment would be distinctly against a yoimg Darwin to-day. 



Thus event after event in Darwin's life was singularly propitious. 

 None but a Darwin would have reflected these events as he did, but 

 grand and rare they certainly were. 



At the age of nineteen he entered Christ's of Cambridge, the small 

 college which two hundred years before had sheltered John Milton, the 

 great poet of " Paradise Lost," the epic of the special creation theory 

 which it was Darwin's destiny to destroy. His passion for sport, shoot- 

 ing, hunting, cross country riding, his genial enjoyment of friends 

 of his own age, did not prevent delightful excursions with older men. 

 He was known as " the man who walks with Henslow " ; and close 

 personal intercourse with this learned and genial botanist (Eev. Wm. 

 C. Henslow) affected him more than any other feature of his college 

 life. After graduation this personal association extended through 

 Henslow to the geologist Sedgwick, who prepared him for the next 

 step in his career. It was Henslow who secured for him his place on 

 the exploring ship Beagle and the voyage round the world (1831- 

 1836), by far the most important experience in his life. 



No graduate course in any university can compare for a moment 

 with the glorious vision which passed before young Darwin on the 

 Beagle, but here again fortune smiled upon him, for this vision re- 

 quired the very scientific spirit and point of view which came to him 

 through the reading of the " Principles of Geology " of Lyell, the 

 masterly teacher of the uniformitarian doctrine of Hutton. That 

 nature worked slowly in past as in present time, and that the inter- 

 pretation of the past is through observation of the present gave the 

 note of Darwin's larger and more original interpretation, because the 

 slow evolution which Lyell piously restricted to geology and the sur- 

 face of the earth Darwin extended to biology and all living beings. 

 If during the voyage Lyell's arguments convinced Darwin of the per- 

 manence of species, Lyell's way of looking at nature also gave him the 

 means of seeing that species are not permanent. In his own words, 

 he " saw through Lyell's eyes," and with the admiration of others 



