CHARLES DARWIN 135 



mental picture, however sketchy, of their personalities, 

 I make no apology for quoting the closing sentences of 

 Huxley's noble panegyric, which appeared a week later 

 in the pages of Nature : 



" It is not for us to allude to the sacred sorrows of the 

 bereaved home at Down ; but it is no secret that, outside 

 that domestic group, there are many to whom Mr. Darwin's 

 death is a wholly irreparable loss. And this not merely 

 because of his wonderfully genial, simple, and generous 

 nature ; his cheerful and animated conversation, and the 

 infinite variety and accuracy of his information ; but 

 because the more one knew of him, the more he seemed 

 the incorporated ideal of a man of science. Acute as 

 were his reasoning powers, vast as was his knowledge, 

 marvellous as was his tenacious industry, under physical 

 difficulties which would have converted nine men out of 

 ten into aimless invalids ; it was not these qualities, 

 great as they were, which impressed those who were 

 admitted to his intimacy, with involuntary veneration, 

 but a certain intense and almost passionate honesty by 

 which all his thoughts and actions were irradiated, as 

 by a central fire. 



" It was this rarest and greatest of endowments which 

 kept his vivid imagination and great speculative powers 

 within due bounds, which compelled him to undertake 

 the prodigious labours of original investigation and of 

 reading, upon which his published works are based ; 

 which made him accept criticisms and suggestions from 

 anybody and everybody, not only without impatience, 

 but with expressions of gratitude sometimes almost 

 comically in excess of their value ; which led him to 

 allow neither himself nor others to be deceived by phrases, 

 and to spare neither time nor pains in order to obtain 

 clear and distinct ideas upon every topic with which he 

 occupied himself. 



" One could not converse with Darwin without being 

 reminded of Socrates. There was the same desire to 



