246 CHARLES DARWIN VIII 
have converted nine men out of ten into aimless 
invalids ; it was not these qualities, great as they 
were, which impressed those who were admitted 
to his intimacy with involuntary veneration, but a 
certain intense and almost passionate honesty by 
which all his thoughts and actions were irradiated, 
as by a central fire. 
It was this rarest and greatest of endowments 
which kept his vivid imagination and great specu- 
lative powers within due bounds ; which compelled 
him to undertake the prodigious labours of original 
investigation and of reading, upon which his 
published works are based; which made him 
accept criticisms and suggestions from anybody 
and everybody, not only without impatience, but 
with expressions of gratitude sometimes almost 
comically in excess of their value ; which led him 
to allow neither himself nor others to be deceived 
by phrases, and to spare neither time nor pains 
in order to obtain clear and distinct ideas upon 
every topic with which he occupied himself. 
One could not converse with Darwin without 
being reminded of Socrates. There was the same 
desire to find some one wiser than himself; the 
same belief in the sovereignty of reason ; the same 
ready humour; the same sympathetic interest in 
all the ways and works of men. But instead of 
turning away from the problems of Nature as 
hopelessly insoluble, our modern philosopher 
devoted his whole life to attacking them in the 
