CHARLES DARWIN. 119 



if what he read was what Hume read, or what Kant read 

 a contingency, possibly, rare rather ! he could not read, 

 and he did not read, as Hume read, or as Kant read. It 

 was not in books that his life lay it was not with books 

 and through books that his soul grew. He was the 

 exemplarily good young man that sought self-improve- 

 ment for himself in all that was ticketed in society as 

 right music, painting, literature ; but it was wholly and 

 solely in physical movements of the earth, or on the earth 

 and over the earth it was only to these really that 

 he could keep his eyes open. His letters are full of con- 

 fessions to this effect. He acknowledges that he has to 

 thank Mr. Herbert Spencer who is " our great philo- 

 sopher," of whom he suspects that " hereafter he will be 

 looked at as by far the greatest living philosopher in 

 England, perhaps equal to any that have lived " for the 

 exposition proper of " the principle of evolution," and 

 even for the very phrase, " the survival of the fittest ; " 

 and yet while thanking Mr. Fiske (iii. 193), of whom he 

 says he " never in his life read so lucid an expositor and 

 therefore thinker," for having crowned his wish " to know 

 something about the views of the many great men whose 

 doctrines he gives" (including Spencer's) he declares, 

 " with the exception of special points I did not even 

 understand H. Spencer's general doctrine, for his style is 

 too hard work for me ; " and he adds : " Such parts of H. 

 Spencer as I have read with care impress my mind with 

 the idea of inexhaustible wealth of suggestion, but never 

 convince me." 1 Of direct utterances, he says (i. 102): 

 " I have no great quickness of apprehension or wit which 



1 Is not this, too, signally illustrative of the phase of intellect we 

 are engaged on : "I fear Pangenesis is still-born ; Bates says he has 

 read it twice, and is not sure that he understands it. H. Spencer 

 says the view is quite different from his (and this is a great relief to 

 nie, as I feared to be accused of plagiarism, but utterly failed to be sure 



