Ixxxviii MEMOIR. 
style which usually indicates confusion of ideas,* but his main 
objection to it was its reversal of the method of the master whose 
theory it professed to supplement, in hasty publication of a theory 
which only long and patient observation of a wide group of facts 
can support or controvert. It may be gathered from what has been 
said that, impaired as was Bates’s bodily vigour, there was no trace 
of mental ossification ; rather of unwearying powers of receptivity. 
There was a wonderful freshness in all that he said, and a wonderful 
charm in the way he said it. His sentences were broken by curious 
hyphen-like pauses. But how perfect they were in construction ; 
clear-cut, pure English, so that, taken down (alas! that they were 
not taken down) not a word need have been altered or transposed. 
Never did the listener leave without being the richer for some fruit- 
ful idea ; some fresh aspect of familiar things, evidencing the power 
of the speaker in seizing upon the relation of a particular fact or 
theory to the totality of knowledge. His thoughts never moved “ in 
such small circles that five minutes’ conversation gave you an arc 
long enough to determine the whole curve.” 
But even more than the gentle voice, the winning smile, and the 
affectionate greeting, the friends of this sincere, this guileless, this 
self-reliant man will cherish, as the chief lesson of his life—especially 
in an age of Stavm und Drang, of pushing to the fore, of clamour 
for priority of discovery of a new sun-spot or asteroid—the whole- 
someness of possessing the soul in patience, of work done in quiet, 
and of finding alike impulse and content in the thought that, so far 
as a man’s work is sterling and contributory, “ natural selection ” will 
take care of it. 
Few titular distinctions came to Bates, and these few were un- 
sought. The Zoological and Linnean Societies elected him as 
honorary Fellow, the one in 1863, the other in 1872; the Entomo- 
logical Society elected him twice as President, namely, in 1869 and 
1878 ; other chairs were offered him from time to time, and declined, 
partly on the ground of health, but chiefly through morbid dread of 
publicity ; and it was not until 1881 that the Royal Society tardily 
added to its prestige by electing him a Fellow. Various conti- 
nental and American learned societies paid him the compliment of 
corresponding membership, and the late Emperor of Brazil made 
him a Chevalier of the Order of the Rose, the badge of which, on 
the rare occasions that he wore it, he did his best to conceal. 
* Cf. Mr. Thiselton Dyer’s Letter on ‘‘ Mr. Romanes’s Paradox,” in Nature, Nov. 1, 
1888. 
