WHAT CONDITIONED THE WORK AND ITS SUCCESS. 195 



thoughts of those whom he saw even for a short time;" " ho, 

 received many strange confessions of misery and guilt : " 

 " my father," says Charles, " told me the story many years 

 after the event, and I asked him how he distinguished the 

 true from the false self -accusations, and it was very charac- 

 teristic of my father that he said he could not explain how 

 it was." It was very characteristic of Mr. Buckle, too, .that 

 when asked how he could judge his facts, "he answered 

 that he did not know, but that a sort of instinct guided him " ! 



If it was hypothesis that dreamed his scheme, and 

 simplicity that led him ardently to work on it, it was 

 tenacity that realised it. But there was another little, 

 peculiarity that combined itself with his tenacity . to 

 effect on his side the success which we have already 

 seen as influenced by others. 



This was a certain natural wiliness, a certain natur.il 

 slyness. I am afraid I shall h'nd some difficulty in 

 procuring the acceptance of this by others. At first 

 sight, at least, it seems utterly at variance with all our 

 psychology of Mr. Darwin as yet. Can truth be wily, 

 the most perfect openness and honour sly ? How is it 

 possible that any wiliness, slyness should at all comport 

 even with the simplicity which has been but now repre- 

 sented to constitute a very fibre of the man ? Suppose 

 we look back to the boy, however, perhaps we may find 

 in him a ground of support. 



In the autobiographical chapter (i. 28) we have this 



" I told another little boy that I could produce variously coloured 

 polyanthuses and primroses by watering them with certain coloured 

 fluids, which was, of course, a monstrous fable, and had never been 

 tried by me. I may here also confeas that as a little boy I was much 

 given to inventing deliberate falsehoods, and this was always done 

 for the sake of causing excitement. For instance, I once gathen d 

 much valuable fruit from my father's trees and hid it in the shrul- 

 bery, and then ran, in breathless haste, to spread the news that i 

 had discovered a hoard of stolen fruit." 



