104 DARWINIANISM. 



says again, " from the mere pleasure of investigation, and 

 from my strong desire to add a few facts to the great 

 mass of facts in natural science. But I was also ambitious 

 to take a fair place among scientific men." It is very 

 characteristic of the true man that, however he be when 

 in the work, he yet, in his very truth, shivers before 

 the work. And so, in his very strength, in his very 

 ambition, in his very conscientiousness (which was an 

 absolute one), he cannot help saying to his sister, " I feel 

 my blood run cold at the quantity I have to do." It 

 was precisely the same state of mind that led him 

 to express a fear to Henslow as to whether he noted the 

 right facts, and as to whether they were of sufficient 

 importance. But let him in this his conscientiousness, 

 and in that his industry, have acquired what habit he 

 may, it must still be said that, in his very being, 

 Charles Darwin was nothing if not te f nacious. 



We may indeed see that Charles Darwin was this 

 (tenacious) from his infancy ; for he was but a child when 

 he signalised his tenacity by collecting all sorts of things 

 shells, seals, franks, coins, minerals, and by his per- 

 severance in the attempts to make out the names of 

 plants. He would sit for hours watching the float of his 

 fishing-rod. He would read for hours the historical 

 jilays of Shakespeare. He "can boast that he read the 

 'rsion twice through;'' and, I doubt not, had it 

 occurred to him, he might have been celebrated as the 

 only man (or boy) that had ever read through the Faery 

 Queenc once. It was tenacity enabled him to recover his 

 school standard of knowledge when he wanted to go to 

 college, and so also always to pass his Littlc-yos and 

 Great-gos there. He read Sir Joshua Eeynolds simply 

 through tenacity, and became for the instant quite an 

 expert in painting ; nor was it different with his appli- 

 cation to music. " I have often heard him say," and it 



