DARWIN. 21 



unconsciously prepared him for his future. Schooldays 

 were for him fortunately not protracted, for in 1825, at 

 the age of sixteen, he went to Edinburgh University, 

 where his father and grandfather had likewise studied, 

 with the idea of devoting himself to medicine. The 

 youth of sixteen was well equipped with the results of 

 long thinking and observing rather than with book- 

 learning, and was prepared to play an independent part 

 without noise and show, assimilating that which com- 

 mended itself to his mind, and rejecting that which 

 found no appropriate soil in him, in a manner character- 

 istic of genuine originality. 



