MENTAL QUALITIES. 83 



cessful lawyer or doctor must have, but not, I believe, in any 

 higher degree. 



On the favourable side of the balance, I think that I am 

 superior to the common run of men in noticing things which 

 easily escape attention, and in observing them carefully. 

 My industry has been nearly as great as it could have been 

 in the observation and collection of facts. What is far more 

 important, my love of natural science has been steady and 

 ardent. 



This pure love has, however, been much aided by the 

 ambition to be esteemed by my fellow naturalists. From my 

 early youth I have had the strongest desire to understand or 

 explain whatever I observed, — that is, to group all facts 

 under some general laws. These causes combined have 

 given me the patience to reflect or ponder for any number 

 of years over any unexplained problem. As far as I can 

 judge, I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men. 

 I have steadily endeavoured to keep my mind free so as to 

 give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot 

 resist forming one on every subject), as soon as facts are 

 shown to be opposed to it. Indeed, I have had no choice 

 but to act in this manner, for with the exception of the Coral 

 Reefs, I cannot remember a single first-formed hypothesis 

 which had not after a time to be given up or greatly modified. 

 This has naturally led me to distrust greatly deductive reason- 

 ing in the mixed sciences. On the other hand, I am not 

 very sceptical, — a frame of mind which I believe to be inju- 

 rious to the progress of science. A good deal of scepticism 

 in a scientific man is advisable to avoid much loss of time, 

 for I have met with not a few men, who, I feel sure, have 

 often thus been deterred from experiment or observations, 

 which would have proved directly or indirectly serviceable. 



In illustration, I will give the oddest case which I have 

 known. A gentleman (who, as I afterwards heard, is a good 

 local botanist) wrote to me from the Eastern counties that 

 the seed or beans of the common field-bean had this year 

 everywhere grown on the wrong side of the pod. I wrote 



