118 DARWINIANISM. 



least latent, that impelled the youth of eighteen to listen 

 with zeal and curiosity to the' literary celebrity (Sir J. 

 Mackintosh), whom he did not understand, as to glow with 

 pride at the commendation which he met with from him. 1 

 It is strange, the sort of constitutive incapacity which, 

 like other outdoors men, Charles Darwin manifested in 

 regard to progression through books. What a different 

 mind, what a different life, the mind and life of a Darwin 

 from the mind and life of a Hume or a Kant ! What 

 repugns him are the very conditions of them. Darwin 

 and Hume, or Darwin and Kant ! As the one would 

 have been absolutely null with nothing but books, so the 

 other, no matter which, would have been absolutely null 

 without them. Seven years at school, five years at 

 universities these twelve years Mr. Darwin declares, so 

 far as what was academically given him is concerned, to 

 have been " completely wasted." It was probably a mis- 

 fortune, at least for Hume, that he had not such an 

 advantage. Mr. Darwin was not quite just and we 

 have instanced his diction here to his literary educa- 

 tion Mr. Darwin, of course, was a most intelligent man, 

 who could read books, and who did read books ; but even 



1 Mr. Darwin (i. 393) writes to his friend Hooker in 1854 : " I am 

 glad you have shown a little bit of ambition about your Journal, for 

 you must know that I have often abused you for not caring more 

 about fame, though, at the same time, I must confess I have envied 

 and honoured you for being so free of this 'last infirmity of, etc.' " 

 Five years earlier (i. 375), he had already expressed to the same friend 

 his contempt for the usual dispensers of what is considered fame : 



" I saw the review in the ; it was written in an ill-natured 



spirit. No one, nowadays, cares for reviews. I may just mention 

 that my Journal got some real good abuse, ' presumption,' etc. ended 

 with saying that the volume appeared 'made up of the scraps 

 and rubbish of the author's portfolio.' Whether your letters are 



adapted for the (in which I have no interest ; the beasts not 



even having noticed my three geological volumes), I have come to 

 the conclusion it is better not to send them." 



