450 THE BIOCOSM08 HISTORICAL. 



Noteworthy is the fact that in the last years 

 of his life he devoted his books chiefly to 

 plants. His was primarily a flower-soul, he 

 was a botanist more than geologist or zoolo- 

 gist. This was an original bent lying in his 

 character, but doubtless unfolded by Profes- 

 sor Henslow, his dearest friend, educator and 

 then helper. Indeed Nature herself was first 

 of all a plant, and Darwin followed her. His 

 earliest love was for flowers, and later he went 

 to the country from flowerless London, living 

 in his Paradise or floral world, which was his 

 garden at Down with its insects and birds. 

 And on his voyage he seems to show the 

 greater inclination for Plant-life, though he 

 keeps also in view Animal-life as well as 

 Earth-life. 



Such, as we look at it, is the movement of 

 the personal biography of Darwin, which is in 

 itself psychical, and unfolds after its own 

 law, though its content is the evolution of or- 

 ganic existence. A remarkably integral life 

 was his, fully rounded out, representing the 

 finished human career, whose process is in- 

 deed a manifestation of the process of the All- 

 Self, or of the Great Entirety. Typical we 

 may deem Darwin's individual Biography, re- 

 flecting the universal Biography of all men at 

 their best and its process, though each man 

 has and must have his own special sphere of 



