54 SPREAD OF EVOLUTION. [l866. 



This tallies with my father's habits, as described by him- 

 self. When a difficulty or an objection occurred to him, 

 he thought it of paramount importance to make a note of 

 it instantly, because he found hostile facts to be especially 

 evanescent. 



The same point is illustrated by the following incident, for 

 which I am indebted to Mr. Romanes : — 



" I have always remembered the following little incident as 

 a good example of Mr. Darwin's extreme solicitude on the 

 score of accuracy. One evening at Down there was a 

 general conversation upon the difficulty of explaining the 

 evolution of some of the distinctively human emotions, espe- 

 cially those appertaining to the recognition of beauty in 

 natural scenery. I suggested a view of my own upon the 

 subject, which, depending upon the principle of association, 

 required the supposition that a long line of ancestors should 

 have inhabited regions, the scenery of which is now re- 

 garded as beautiful. Just as I was about to observe that the 

 chief difficulty attaching to my hypothesis arose from 

 feelings of the sublime (seeing that these are associated with 

 awe, and might therefore be expected not to be agreeable), 

 Mr. Darwin anticipated the remark, by asking how the 

 hypothesis was to meet the case of these feelings. In the 

 conversation which followed, he said the occasion in his own 

 life, when he was most affected by the emotions of the sublime 

 was when he stood upon one of the summits of the Cordillera, 

 and surveyed the magnificent prospect all around. It seemed, 

 as he quaintly observed, as if his nerves had become fiddle- 

 strings, and had all taken to rapidly vibrating. This remark 

 was only made incidentally, and the conversation passed into 

 some other branch. About an hour afterwards Mr. Darwin 

 retired to rest, while I sat up in the smoking-room with one 

 of his sons. We continued smoking and talking for several 

 hours, when at about one o'clock in the morning the door 

 gently opened and Mr. Darwin appeared, in his slippers and 



