MODERN EVOLUTION. 



203 



left, intellectually, altogether to his own devices. 

 He tells us that he was a voracious and omnivorous 

 reader, " a dreamer and speculator of the first water, 

 well endowed with that splendid courage in attacking 

 any and every subject which is the blessed compensa- 

 tion of youth and inexperience." Among the books 

 and essays that impressed him were Guizot's History 

 of Civilization; and Sir William Hamilton's essay 

 On the Philosophy of the Unconditioned which he 

 accidentally came upon in an odd volume of the 

 Edinburgh Review. This, he adds, was " devoured 

 with avidity," and it stamped upon his mind the 

 strong conviction " that on even the most solemn 

 and important of questions, men are apt to take 

 cunning phrases for answers; and that the limitation 

 of our faculties, in a great number of cases, renders 

 real answers to such questions, not merely actually 

 impossible, but theoretically inconceivable." Thus, 

 before he was out of his teens, the philosophy that 

 ruled his life-teaching was taking definite shape. 



In 1845, he won his M. B. London with honours 

 in anatomy and physiology, and after a few months' 

 practice at the East End, applied, at the instance of 

 his senior fellow-student, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Joseph 

 Fayrer, for an appointment in the medical service of 

 the Navy. At the end of two months he was for- 

 tunate enough to be entered on the books of Nelson's 

 old ship, the Victory, for duty at Haslar Hospital. 

 His official chief was the famous Arctic Explorer, Sir 

 John Richardson, through whose recommendation 



