THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



tracting and of keeping friends. In early life he was 

 sociable and was broadly interested in art and litera- 

 ture, but his break-down in health forbade an active 

 life and prevented him from cultivating society, al- 

 though he maintained his keen love for his friends; 

 and his absorption in his work and the necessity of 

 conserving each moment of time seem to have drawn 

 down the curtain of his life and to have made him 

 lose interest gradually in the arts and literature. His 

 life became a long chronicle of ill-health and of a 

 struggle to work three or four hours a day, with even 

 that privilege broken by long and frequent intervals 

 of inability to do anything. Patient and uncomplain- 

 ing, he became obsessed with the subject of his health. 

 He hardly wrote a letter which did not refer to it and 

 to his inability to work; he mourned because his mind 

 was weak and dizzy ; and he became morbidly appre- 

 hensive lest his children were, by heredity, doomed to 

 the same fate. He gradually lost pleasure in most 

 phases, even, of his work; he vacillated in his ideas; 

 writing and the composition of his books became a 

 heavy burden; he held aloof from the controversial 

 battles which beat about him; but the one thing which 

 remained a keen and never-failing delight was the ob- 

 servation of the habits of plants and animals. 



When we examine Darwin's methods and results 

 of observation and experimentation, we find all to be 

 admirable. Working with the simplest apparatus and 

 tools, he obtains great and permanent results of a far- 



C 190 1 



