92 LIFE OF SIR JOHN LUBBOCK ch. 



me) — I am as certain of it, as we both are that whales 

 are degraded quadrupeds, or Cirrhipods degraded 

 Entomostraca or insects. I am sure that, side by side 

 with Darwin's true theory of development by natural 

 causes, lies a theory of degradation by the same causes ; 

 which I sketched once in serious jest in the Water Babies ; 

 and it will be part of our future work to investigate the 

 methods of Natural Degradation. 



But of all this more hereafter. It was a very great 

 pleasure to meet you again : for I have conceived, for 

 some years past, high hopes of what you will do in 

 Science. It is a reproach to our House of Commons, 

 that there is not one naturalist, or man of Science in it. 

 And I trust to see you in it some day, to support those 

 claims of common sense and fact, which my once tutor, 

 J. S. Mill, seems for the present to have relegated in 

 favour of the barbarism of Bright. 



I was deeply moved at meeting, for the first time, 

 Darwin. I trembled before him like a boy, and longed 

 to tell him all I felt for him, but dare not, lest he should 

 think me a flatterer extravagant. But the modesty 

 and simplicity of his genius was charming. Instead of 

 teaching, he only wanted to learn, instead of talking, to 

 listen, till I found him asking me to write papers which 

 he could as yet hardly write himself — ignorant, in his 

 grand simplicity, of my ignorance, and his own wisdom. 

 And yet of that man Owen said to me — " Darwin is just 

 as good a soul as his grandfather — and just as great a 

 goose." — With kind regards to Lady Lubbock, ever 

 yours sincerely, C. Kingsley. 



Kingsley's appreciation of Darwin, expressed 

 in this letter, is of no little interest. Sir John 

 Lubbock's letters to that great man always 

 express a spirit of something like filial devotion, 

 and there is no question but that those qualities 

 of " modesty and simplicity," which were equally 

 remarkable in Sir John Lubbock as in Darwin 

 himself, were in part the effect in the younger 

 man of the example of the older. 



He attended the Dundee meeting of the 



