394 EVOLUTION [Chap. V 



With regard to chance, Darwin wrote : " You have expressed my inward 

 conviction, though far more clearly and vividly than I could have done, 

 that the universe is not the result of chance." 



Down, August 28th, 1881. 

 Letter 307 j ] iave been much interested by your letter, and am glad 

 that you like Mr. Graham's book. 1 . . . 



Everything which I read now soon goes out of my head, 

 and I had forgotten that he implies that my views explain 

 the universe ; but it is a most monstrous exaggeration. The 

 more one thinks the more one feels the hopeless immensity 

 of man's ignorance. Though it does make one proud to see 

 what science has achieved during the last half-century. This 

 has been brought vividly before my mind by having just read 

 most of the proofs of Lubbock's Address for York, 2 in which 

 he will attempt to review the progress of all branches of 

 science for the last fifty years. 



for the public service, where he became Permanent Secretary of the 

 Board of Trade. According to the Times, Oct. 13th, 1899, "for nearly 

 forty years he was synonymous with the Board in the opinion of all 

 who were brought into close relation with it." He was made a baronet in 

 1883 ; he retired from his post a few years later, and was raised to the 

 peerage in 1893. His friendship with Mr. Darwin was of many years' 

 standing, and opportunities of meeting were more frequent in the last 

 ten years of Mr. Darwin's life, owing to Lord Farrer's marriage with 

 Miss Wedgwood, a niece of Mrs. Darwin's, and the subsequent marriage 

 of his son Horace with Miss Fairer. His keen love of science is attested 

 by the letters given in the present volume. He published several ex- 

 cellent papers on the fertilisation of flowers in the Ann. and Mag. of 

 Natural History, and in Nature, between 1868 and 1874. 



In politics he was a Radical — a strong supporter of free trade : on 

 this last subject, as well as on bimetallism, he was frequently engaged 

 in public controversy. He loyally carried out many changes in the 

 legislature which, as an individualist, he would in his private capacity 

 have strenuously opposed. 



In the Speaker, Oct. 21st, 1899, Lord Welby heads his article on 

 Lord Farrer with a few words of personal appreciation : — 



" In Lord Fairer has passed away a most interesting personality. 

 A great civil servant ; in his later years a public man of courage and 

 lofty ideal ; in private life a staunch friend, abounding as a companion 

 in humour and ripe knowledge. Age had not dimmed the geniality of 

 his disposition, or an intellect lively and eager as that of a boy — lovable 

 above all in the transparent simplicity of his character." 



1 In Lord Farrer's letter of August 27th he refers to the old difficulty, 

 in relation to design, of the existence of evil. 



- Lord Avebury was President of the British Association in 1881. 



