CHARLES DARWIN. 73 



them." The italicised " named " is Mr. Darwin's own ; 

 and it brings with it its secret, perhaps. It may remind, 

 namely, that some of those who are not the best cal- 

 culated even for the learning of languages, are apt to be 

 caught with the big technological names of the com- 

 monest things. What, in English, makes most of us 

 creep, can only fill them with rapture in Latin. The 

 Cockroach is an ugly varmint ; but how grand he is as 

 the Blatta orientalis ! Betty, in the kitchen, holds up her 

 skirts, of an evening, with an even infinite horror of the 

 black beetles on the floor ; but ought she not to let them 

 down again when she is assured that each is only that 

 grand thing a Blaps mortisaga ? So it is, perhaps, that 

 the boy was delighted to be at home with such abomina- 

 tions to others as were to him Zygsena, or Hemiptera, or 

 'a Cicindela. There is certainly a charm in being able 

 to give learned terms to a thousand of the commonest 

 objects for which we commonly have no name. Even for 

 the sake of the naming, then, may we suppose it to 

 be the case that at least sometimes collectors are 

 collectors ? * 



It would seem, however, that it could not have been 

 for the names only that the boy as Mr. Darwin, in 



1 I should be sorry if it were misunderstood from the above that 

 I in any way desired to represent researches into even the very 

 lowest forms of life as olrtfAa. without right of citizenship, as it 

 were. On the contrary, I am assured of the important lessons of 

 the humanising influences which they bring with them, especially 

 for the young. In good truth, there is nothing in nature which is 

 beneath mind ; for mind is the source, and the seat, and the goal of 

 nature ; the vou; of Anaxagoras is still in a way the secret of the 

 universe. " If, in regard to the study of the other animals, any one 

 opine such study to be beneath his attention, he ought to think the 

 same for himself ; since it is not possible to see without aversion what 

 human beings consist of, as blood, flesh, bones, veins, and the like." 

 So says Aristotle, 645a. 



