IN MEMORIAM: CHARLES DARWIN 



the twenty-second year is, with most men, 

 the only available period for acquiring the in- 

 tellectual habits and amassing the stores of 

 knowledge that are to form their equipment for 

 the work of a life-time ; but in the case of men 

 of the highest order this period is simply a 

 period of seven years, neither more nor less 

 valuable than any other seven years. There is, 

 now and then, a mind perhaps one in four or 

 five millions which in early youth thinks the 

 thoughts of mature manhood, and which in old 

 age retains the flexibility, the receptiveness, 

 the keen appetite for new impressions, that are 

 characteristic of the fresh season of youth. Such 

 a mind as this was Mr. Darwin's. To the last 

 he was eager for new facts and suggestions, to 

 the last he held his judgments in readiness for 

 revision ; and to this unfailing freshness of spirit 

 was joined a sagacity which, naturally great, had 

 been refined and strengthened by half a century 

 most fruitful in experiences, till it had come to 

 be almost superhuman. When we remember 

 how Alexander von Humboldt began at the age 

 of seventy-five to write his " Kosmos," and how 

 he lived to turn off" in his ninetieth year the 

 fifth bulky volume of that prodigiously learned 

 book, when we remember this, and consider 

 the great scientific value of the monographs 

 which Mr. Darwin has lately been publishing 

 almost every year, we must feel that it is in a 

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