1G2 LIFE OF 



gratitude shown, at least in England, to these benefactors 

 of mankind. As for myself, permit me to assure you 

 that I honour, and shall always honour, every one who 

 advances the noble science of physiology. 



" Dear sir, yours faithfully, 



"CHARLES DARWIN." 



As an experimenter Darwin was by no means over- 

 confident either in his methods or his power of obtaining 

 results. He simply took the best means open to him, or 

 that he could devise, applied them in the best way known 

 to him, and calmly studied the result. " As far as my 

 experience goes," he wrote, in reference to experimental 

 work, " what one expects rarely happens." On another 

 occasion, after working like a slave at a certain investiga- 

 tion, " with very poor success ; " he remarks, " as usual, 

 almost everything goes differently to what I had antici- 

 pated." How few investigators have the magnanimity 

 which appears in this confession. But more than this, it 

 is an indication of the rare patience with which he stuck 

 at a subject till he knew all he could read or discover or 

 develop in connection with it. It was " dogged " that did 

 it; "awfully hard work" sometimes. In reference to an 

 attempt of his to define intelligence, which he regarded 

 as unsatisfactory, after remarking that he tried to observe 

 what passed in his own mind when he did the work of a 

 worm, he writes : " If I come across a professed meta- 

 physician, I will ask him to give me a more technical 

 definition with a few big words, about the abstract, the 

 concrete, the absolute, and the infinite. But sincerely, I 

 should be grateful for any suggestions ; for it will hardly 



