58 CHARLES DARWIN 



CHAPTER V. 



THE PERIOD OF INCUBATION. 



WHEN Charles Darwin landed in England on his return 

 from the voyage of the ' Beagle ' he was nearly twenty- 

 eight. When he published the first edition of the 

 * Origin of Species ' he was over fifty. The intermediate 

 years, though much occupied by many minor works of 

 deep specialist scientific importance, were still mainly 

 devoted to collecting material for the one crowning 

 effort of his life, the chief monument of his great co- 

 ordinating and commanding intellect the settlement 

 of the question of organic evolution. 



' There is one thing,' says Professor Fiske, ' which 

 a man of original scientific or philosophical genius in 

 a rightly ordered world should never be called upon to 

 do. He should never be called upon to earn a living ; 

 for that is a wretched waste of energy, in which the 

 highest intellectual power is sure to suffer serious 

 detriment, and runs the risk of being frittered away 

 into hopeless ruin.' From this unhappy necessity 

 Charles Darwin, like his predecessor Lyell, was luckily 

 free. He settled down early in a home of his own, 

 and worked away at his own occupations, with no 

 sordid need for earning the day's bread, but with 



