310 EVOLUTION AND DOGMA. 



for the discussion of abstract or metaphysical ques- 

 tions. " My power," he writes in his autobiography, 

 "to follow a long and purely abstract train of 

 thought, is very limited ; and therefore I could never 

 have succeeded with metaphysics or mathematics." 

 But aside from his incompetence as a metaphysician, 

 the very doctrine he championed so lustily seemed 

 to render him nebulous and skeptical even about 

 primary intuitions. Having occasion to give an 

 opinion on the "Creed of Science," he wrote: " The 

 horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions 

 of man's mind, which has been developed from the 

 mind of the lower animals, are of any value, or at all 

 trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions 

 of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in 

 such a mind ?" ' 



One is not surprised, I repeat, to find metaphys- 

 ical and theological errors in Darwin's works, for, in 

 addition to his acknowledged incapacity in abstract 

 subjects, his mind was so preoccupied with biology 

 in its bearings on Evolution, that he was practically 

 indifferent to, if not oblivious of, everything outside 

 his immediate sphere of research. He is, indeed, a 

 striking illustration of the truth of Cardinal New- 

 man's observations when he declares, that "Any one 

 study, of whatever kind, exclusively pursued, dead- 

 ens in the mind the interest, nay, the perception, of 

 any other. Thus, Cicero says, Plato and Demos- 

 thenes, Aristotle and Isocrates, might have respect- 

 ively excelled in each other's province, but that each 

 was absorbed in his own. Specimens of this pecul- 



144 Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," vol. I, p. 285. 



