A GREAT LESSON. 241 



A GREAT LESSON. 



Bt tue duke of ARGYLL. 



THE most delightful of all Mr. Darwin's works is the first he ever 

 wrote. It is his " Journal " as the Naturalist of H. M. S. Beagle 

 in her exploring voyage round the world from the beginning of 1832 

 to nearly the end of 1836. It was published in 1842, and a later edi- 

 tion appeared in 1845. Celebrated as this book once was, few prob- 

 ably read it now. Yet in many respects it exhibits Darwin at his best, 

 and if we are ever inclined to rest our opinions upon authority, and 

 to accept without doubt what a remarkable man has taught, I do not 

 know any work better calculated to inspire confidence than Darwin's 

 "Journal." It records the observations of a mind singularly candid and 

 unprejudiced — fixing upon Nature a gaze keen, penetrating, and curi- 

 ous, but yet cautious, reflective, and almost reverent. The thought of 

 how little we know — of how much there is to be known, and of how 

 hardly we can learn it — is the thought which inspires the narrative as 

 with an abiding presence. There is, too, an intense love of Nature 

 and an intense admiration of it, the expression of which is carefully 

 restrained and measured, but which seems often to overflow the limits 

 which are self-imposed. And when man, the highest work of Nature, 

 but not always its happiest or its best, comes across his path, Darwin's 

 observations are always noble. "A kindly man moving amono- his 

 kind" seems to express his spirit. Pie appreciates every high callino-, 

 every good work, however far removed it may be from that to which 

 he was himself devoted. His language about the missionaries of 

 Christianity is a signal example, in striking contrast with the too com- 

 mon language of lesser men. His indignant denunciation of slavery 

 presents the same high characteristics of a mind eminently gentle and 

 humane. In following him we feel that not merely the intellectual 

 but the moral atmosphere in which we move is high and pure. And 

 then, besides these great recommendations, there is another which 

 must not be overlooked. We have Darwin here before he was a Dar- 

 winian. He embarked on that famous voyage with no preconceived 

 theories to maintain. Yet he was the grandson of Dr. Erasmus Dar- 

 win — a man very famous in his day, who was the earliest popular ex- 

 ponent of evolution as explaining the creative work, and who, both in 

 prose and verse, had made it familiar as at least a dream and a poetic 

 speculation. Charles Darwin in his "Journal " seems as unconscious of 

 that speculation as if he had never heard of it, or was as desirous to 

 forget it as if he concurred in the ridicule of it which had amused the 

 readers of the " An ti- Jacobin." Only once in the "Journal" is there 

 any allusion to such speculations, and then only to the form in whicli 

 they had been more scientifically clothed by the French naturalist La- 



VOL. XXXII. — 16 



