62 CHARLES DARWIN 



More than that, he brought them all over in the long 

 run as deserters into his own camp, and converted them 

 from doubtful and suspicious foes into warm adherents 

 of the evolutionary banner. 



Moreover, fortunately for the world, Darwin's own 

 mind was essentially one of the inductive type. If a 

 great deductive thinker and speculator like Herbert 

 Spencer had hit upon the self-same idea of survival of 

 the fittest, he might have communicated it to a small 

 following of receptive disciples, who would have under- 

 stood it and accepted it, on a priori grounds alone, and 

 gradually passed it on to the grades beneath them ; but 

 he would never have touched the slow and cautious 

 elephantine intellect of the masses. The common run 

 of mankind are not deductive; they require to have 

 everything made quite clear to them by example and 

 instance. The English intelligence in particular shows 

 itself as a rule congenitally incapable of appreciating 

 the superior logical certitude of the deductive method. 

 Englishmen will not even believe that the square on 

 the hypotenuse is equal to the squares on the containing 

 sides until they have measured and weighed as well as 

 they are able by rude experimental devices a few selected 

 pieces of rudely shaped rectangular paper. It was a 

 great gain, therefore, that the task of reconstructing 

 the course of organic evolution should fall to the lot of 

 a highly trained and masterly intelligence of the in- 

 ductive order. Darwin had first to convince himself, 

 and then he could proceed to convince the world. He 

 set about the task with characteristic patience and 

 thoroughness. No man that ever Kved possessed in a 

 more remarkable degree than he did the innate capacity 



