CHAPTER X. 



CHARLES DARWIN CONTINUED. 



FROM the evidence of the Journal, then, it seems not 

 unlikely that the young Darwin was a more concrete 

 human being than the older, mature, illustrious Darwin 

 when at last struck, as it were, into a single abstract 

 thought, Necessary variation of accident, taken advantage 

 of and applied ly nature to a new organic use, with the 

 inevitable ultimate result of a new species. 



That is, accurately, totally, and absolutely, the single, 

 simple, one action postulated by Mr. Darwin for the Origin 

 of Species by means of Natural Selection. 



That apart, however, the general character of Mr. 

 Darwin, intellectual and other, must, in the course of this 

 writing, have been gradually clearing itself for us. It 

 takes the pouring on of chemicals to crisp into an image 

 the nebula upon the plate. Natural history was, from 

 the first and emphatically, his single bent, as it were his 

 single vital stir, his one constitutive natural nisus. The 

 term stir comes up here not wwsignificantly ; for it was stir 

 that alone claimed his attention, stir that alone woke his 

 single natural life. It may be said, indeed, that Charles 

 Darwin's destiny in life was to watch physical movement 

 physical movement from the stir of an insect in the 

 dust to the explosion of an earthquake all around. So 

 it was that he had no turn for languages. Observation 



