82 Darwinism and Other Essays. 



nant, allusions we have an instance in the use 

 made of the conception of a " spherical intelli- 

 gence " in the essay on " The Evolution of Self- 

 Consciousness," where the brief reference to the 

 Platonic Timaios is by no means sufficient to re- 

 lieve the strain upon the reader's attention. It is 

 this too compact suggestiveness which makes this 

 remarkable essay so hard to understand, and the 

 exuberance of which half tempted Mr. Wright to 

 give to the paper the very esoteric title of " The 

 Cognition of Coffito." A writer who kept the 

 public in his mind would not proceed in this way, 

 but would more often give pages luminous with 

 concrete illustrations where Mr. Wright only 

 gave sentences cumbrous with epigrammatic 

 terseness. If Mr. Wright did not keep the pub- 

 lic in mind while writing, it was not from the 

 pride of knowledge, for no feeling could have 

 been more foreign to him ; and there was some- 

 thing almost touching in the endless patience 

 with which he would strive in conversation to 

 make abstruse matters clear to ordinary minds. 

 It was because, as a writer, he thought in solilo- 

 quy, using his pen to note down the course of 

 his reasoning, but failing to realize the difficulty 

 which others might find in apprehending the nu- 

 merous and far-reaching connotations of phrases 

 to him entirely familiar. 



