OF NATURE. 



609 



nature to liberate the human intellect ; to point to 

 the diversity and individuality of natural things rather 

 than to their sameness and repetition, and to see in 

 this divine confusion the very essence of nature and the 

 source of all that makes her interesting and delightful 

 to the human soul. 



To this philosophical view, which touches the real 

 problem of nature, all the labours of the purely scientific 

 mind seem to unveil only the skeleton around which 

 nature herself throws, in endless ways and varieties, 



the temper of the clown. On the 

 other hand, let the reasoning 

 powers be shrewd in excess, the 

 knowledge vast, or sensibility 

 intense, and it will go hard but 

 that the visible object will suggest 

 so much that it shall be soon 

 itself forgotten, or become at the 

 utmost merely a kind of key- 

 note to the course of purposeful 

 thought." The third important 

 contribution and confirmation of 

 this reflection is to be found in 

 Charles Darwin's own account of 

 the development of his mind iu 

 the course of his life and through 

 the influence of his studies: "In 

 one respect my mind has changed 

 during the last twenty or thirty 

 years. Up to the age. of thirty or 

 beyond it, poetry of many kinds, 

 such as the works of Milton, 

 Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Cole- 

 ridge, and Shelley, gave me great 

 pleasure. . . . Formerly pictures 

 gave me considerable, and music 

 very, great delight. But now for 

 many years I cannot endure to 

 read a line of poetry. ... I have 

 also almost lost my taste for 

 pictures or music. ... I retain 

 some taste for fine scenery, but it 

 does not cause me the exquisite 

 delight which it formerly did. . . . 

 This curious and lamentable loss 



of the higher aesthetic tastes is all 

 the odder, as books on History, 

 Biographies and Travels, and 

 Essays on all sorts of subjects, 

 interest me as much as ever they 

 did. My mind seems to have 

 become a kind of machine for 

 grinding general laws out of large 

 collections of facts, &c. " (' Life 

 and Letters of Charles Darwin,' 1st 

 ed., vol. i. p. 100). In the face of 

 this self-depreciation, this honest 

 and modest confession, we may 

 safely maintain that only through- 

 the early delight in nature, the 

 intimate communion with her and' 

 the breadth of observation, did 

 Darwin's mind succeed in fastening 

 upon some undiscovered features ofi 

 her life as a whole : as he indeed 

 has done more to cultivate and 

 encourage the vue d'ensemblf, the 

 synoptic view of nature, and to 

 counteract the purely analytic and 

 synthetic methods of the earlier 

 natural sciences, than any other 

 naturalist iu recent times. And 

 having, from the deep source which 

 the love of nature revealed to him, 

 drawn such a full and overflowing 

 measure, we may feel thankful 

 that he spent his life in dispens- 

 ing the same for the benefit of 

 science and the delight of his many 

 followers and admirers. 



VOL. III. 



