436 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 
pretension; and this is remarkable, considering how censure 
and how praise were heaped upon him without stint. He 
does not teach didactically, but takes the reader along with 
him as his companion in observation and in experiment. 
And in the same spirit, instead of showing pique to an oppo- 
nent, he seems always to regard him as a helper in his search 
for the truth. Those privileged to know him well will certify 
that he was one of the most kindly and charming, unaffected, 
simple-hearted, and lovable of men. 
How far and how long the Darwinian theory will hold 
good, the future will determine. But in its essential elements, 
apart from @ priori philosophizing, with which its author had 
nothing to do, it is an advance from which it is evidently im- 
possible to recede. As has been said of the theory of the 
Conservation of Energy, so of this: ‘“‘ The proof of this great 
generalization, like that of all other generalizations, lies 
mainly in the fact that the evidence in its favor is continually 
augmenting, while that against it is continually diminishing, 
as the progress of science reveals to us more and more of the 
workings of the universe.” 
