32 THE METHOD OF DARWIN. 



work, and listened with deference to the sug- 

 gestions of others. He never dealt out primi- 

 tive justice to his opponents on the principle 

 of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. 

 He is morally famous for the forbearance that 

 he exercised toward those who attacked him. 

 This fame is heightened by the fact that he 

 was an acute judge of mental quality. His 

 investigations made it necessary for him to 

 collect information from all sorts of sources, 

 not only at first hand, from Nature herself, 

 but at second hand, from many kinds of books, 

 made by many kinds of men. He has com- 

 plained that it was exceedingly difficult to find 

 out what and whom to trust. 1 But his criti- 

 cisms of certain kinds of work show how 

 definite were his standards of value in measur- 

 ing scientific results. 



Perhaps the most savage things Darwin ever 

 wrote are contained in letters to Hugh Strick- 

 land, and relate to the nomenclature of sys- 

 tematic zoology and botany. 2 He expressed 

 freely his contempt for describers of species 

 who think the honor consists in having one's 

 name appended to that of a newly described 

 species, and whose work is generally so inac- 



1 Life and Letters, Vol. II. p. 75. 



2 Ibid., Vol. I. pp. 334, 33 8 > 344- 



