436 THE BIOCOSMOS HISTORICAL. 



heroic act surely of its kind; what seasoned 

 entomologist would dare it ! But the prisoned 

 bug shed an acrid juice "which, burnt my 

 tongue so that I was forced to spit it out,' : 

 and so it was lost, says Darwin regretfully. 

 This certainly shows the bent of the youth, as 

 well as his observing power. Through the 

 advice of ITenslow he studied geology and 

 went with its professor, Sedgwick, on a geo- 

 logical expedition to North Wales. Such was 

 his real education at Cambridge; he was in 

 training to be the High-Priest of Nature and 

 not a clergyman of the Church of England; 

 nor could he be brought to fit into any of the 

 prescribed vocations. It may be noted that 

 already his heart is set upon communing with 

 organic life, and that he has in a desultory 

 way tapped its three main divisions : Plant- 

 life (botany), Animal-life (zoology), Earth- 

 life (geology). 



It is manifest that Darwin 's education up to 

 this point has had two lines' in it the open, 

 regular, authorized, and the secret, irregular, 

 unauthorized. He has been training himself, 

 in defiance of the prescriptive disciplines; 

 though he has not rebelled, he has quietly let 

 them run into him and then run out. Classics, 

 Medicine, Theology had all tried to educate 

 Charles Darwin and could not; they were un- 

 able to call out of its germ his true self, his 



