DARWIN 



reaching importance. He examines the habits and bor- 

 ings of earth-worms in a small area and shows their 

 fundamental importance to agriculture; his work on 

 climbing plants and on fertilization is a model of ac- 

 curacy and acumen; his enormous accumulation of 

 facts in regard to domesticated animals, and to evolu- 

 tion, is bewildering. He draws his conclusions with 

 admirable certainty and he easily ranks as the fore- 

 most biologist of all times. 



But when we turn to Darwin's theoretical and 

 philosophical work we find an absolutely different 

 man. He is the exact opposite to Newton, who never 

 lost his sureness of aim and certainty of thought even 

 when absorbed in the widest sweep of the imagina- 

 tion. Darwin vacillates when it becomes necessary to 

 apply his strictly scientific observations and personal 

 conclusions to the broad field of evolution which must 

 include a whole world of phenomena, most of them 

 impossible to place within the scope of his personal 

 observation and explainable only by unerring genius 

 of the imagination. Newton extended his law of grav- 

 itation to include the universe from a few simple ob- 

 servations and postulates, and then relied on his 

 powers of logic and mathematics; Darwin made a 

 great accumulation of facts in order to meet all objec- 

 tions and, in the end, this accumulation of facts over- 

 burdened him; he could not fall back upon verbal or 

 philosophical logic, in which he was deficient, nor on 

 mathematical logic, of which he had none. He became 



c 191 1 



