THE INDIVIDUALITY OF CHARLES DARWIN 345 



stroke. Events had been shaping themselves to this end since the 

 twenty-seventh of December, 1831, when the little brig Beagle sailed 

 from Plymouth harbor, bearing the unknown and youthful Charles 

 Darwin to the discovery of a new world — ^not, however, an unexplored 

 continent to be claimed for commerce and civilization, but a vastly 

 greater and more valuable realm of thought to be opened to knowledge 

 and conquered for intellectual freedom. Darwin, like the prophets 

 of old, in preparation for his exalted mission, betook himself to the 

 uninhabited wilderness, away from the influence of other minds, in 

 order that he might draw inspiration from untrammeled and clarifying 

 communion with nature. In his narrow cabin on the broad Atlantic, 

 on the desert plains of Patagonia, on desolate and unpeopled islands 

 of the Pacific, in the dark and solemn forests of the tropics, and on 

 the summits of the bleak and barren Andes he gained the coveted 

 prize of wisdom which had been denied him in the populous halls of 

 two great universities where his free spirit had rebelled against the 

 narrow conventionality of classical education. 



Although a born investigator he had been driven and harassed for 

 fourteen years by unthinking instructors devoid of both the ability and 

 the disposition to consider his natural endowments and inclinations and 

 who, with one or two exceptions, according to his own later judgment, 

 wasted their time upon an unappreciative and discouraging pupil. He 

 says of himself that he was slow in learning, but a review of his produc- 

 tive life clearly shows that, if he was dull in any respect, it was solely in 

 the matter of accepting ideas at second hand. It happened, merely, that 

 what most of his teachers were prepared to impart he was not consti- 

 tuted to receive ; and so one of the acutest observers the world has ever 

 known was thought to be inattentive and unreceptive. During all the 

 school days of his childhood, passed in his native town of Shrewsbury, 

 not only were his superb mental gifts wholly unrecognized, but no 

 attempt was ever made to find out if he had any such gifts. He spent 

 seven useless years at Dr. Butler's so-called " great school," but, appar- 

 ently, the head master never came to know his talented pupil, for the 

 educational system which prevailed in that institution had no reference 

 to " the discovery of the exceptional man." The one ceaseless effort of 

 his schoolmasters was to crowd him into the common mold. 



Eeceiving no sjnnpathy and little assistance from the teachers of his 

 boyhood, he developed " a strong taste for long solitary walks " and cul- 

 tivated the habit of stealing time for more or less surreptitious collecting 

 in several departments of natural history. Thus he became, in all 

 important respects, self-taught and, driven to his own resources, his 

 natural inclination to consider his path of life as lying far aside from 

 the common highway was confirmed and strengthened. This sense of 

 solitariness followed him to the end of his life and was, no doubt, an 



VOL. LXXII. — 24. 



