NATURE 
597 
THURSDAY, APRIL 27, 1882 
CHARLES DARWIN 
ERY few, even among those who have taken the 
keenest interest in the progress of the revolution in 
natural knowledge set afoot by the publication of the 
“Origin of Species”; and who have watched, not without 
astonishment, the rapid and complete change which has 
been effected both inside and outside the boundaries of 
the scientific world in the attitude of men’s minds 
towards the doctrines which are expounded in that great 
work, can have been prepared for the extraordinary mani- 
festation of affectionate regard for the man, and of pro- 
found reverence for the philosopher, which followed the 
announcement, on Thursday last, of the death of Mr. 
Darwin. 
Not only in these islands, where so many have felt the 
fascination of personal contact with an intellect which had 
no superior, and with a character which was even nobler 
than the intellect ; but, in all parts of the civilised world, 
it would seem that those whose business it is to feel the 
pulse of nations and to know what interests the masses of 
mankind, were well aware that thousands of their readers 
would think the world the poorer for Darwin's death, 
and would dwell with eager interest upon every in- 
cident of his history. In France, in Germany, in 
Austro-Hungary, in Italy, in the United States, writers of 
all shades of opinion, for once unanimous, have paid a 
willing tribute to the worth of our great countryman, 
ignored in life by the official representatives of the king- 
dom, but laid in death among his peers in Westminster 
Abbey by the will of the intelligence of the nation. 
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. Dar- 
win’s death is a wholly irreparable loss. And this not 
merely because of his wonderfully genial, simple, and gene- 
rous 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 
any body and every body, not only without impatience, 
but with expressions of gratitude sometimes almost comi- 
cally 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. 
VoL. xxv.—No. 652 
One could not converse with Darwin without being 
reminded of Socrates. There was the same desire to 
find some one wiser than himself; the same belief in the 
sovereignty of reason; the same ready humour; the 
same sympathetic interest in all the ways and works of 
men. But instead of turning away from the problems of 
nature as hopelessly insoluble, our modern philosopher 
devoted his whole life to attacking them in the spirit of 
Heraclitus and of Democritus, with results which are 
as the substance of which their speculations were an- 
ticipatory shadows. 
The due appreciation or even enumeration of these 
results is neither practicable nor desirable at this moment. 
There is a time for all things—a time for glorying in our 
ever-extending conquests over the realm of nature, and a 
time for mourning over the heroes who have led us to 
victory. 
None have fought better, and none have been more 
fortunate than Charles Darwin. He found a great truth, 
trodden under foot, reviled by bigots, and ridiculed by 
all the world ; he lived long enough to see it, chiefly by 
his own efforts, irrefragably established in science, in- 
separably incorporated with the common thoughts of 
men, and only hated and feared by those who would revile, 
but dare not. What shall a man desire more than this? 
Once more the image of Socrates rises unbidden, and 
the noble peroration of the “Apology” rings in our ears as 
if it were Charles Darwin’s farewell :— 
“The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our 
ways—lI to die and you to live. Which is the better, 
God only knows.” TH Uke 
PROF. WIESNER ON “THE POWER OF 
MOVEMENT IN PLANTS”? 
Das Bewegungsvermigen der Phanzen:*eine kritische 
Studie tiber das gleichnamige Werk, von Charles 
Darwin, nebst neuen Untersuchungen. Von Julius 
Wiesner. 8vo, pp. 212. Three Woodcuts. (Wien: 
Holder, 1881.) 
IGHT as a Stimulus.—\n “The Power of Move- 
ment” (p. 458) we observed the heliotropic curvature 
of anumber of seedlings placed at 2, 4, 8,12, 16, and 20 
feet from a lateral light, and we came to the conclusion 
from inspection that the difference in heliotropic effect 
was not proportional to the intensity of light which the 
different sets of plants received. We think that this fact 
shows that light acts as a stimulus in causing heliotro- 
pism; if it acted ina simple physical manner the effects 
would bear some closer relation to the intensities of the 
causes. 
Wiesner criticises this conclusion, and says (p. 78) that 
the fact is capable of a simple physical explanation. 
Wiesner has discovered that when plants are subjected to 
extremely bright light, they do not bend so much as when 
the light is slightly weaker (optimum for heliotropism) ; 
then as the light becomes weaker still, the heliotropic 
curvature again diminishes. This fact is supposed to be 
explicable by assuming the existence of certain negatively 
heliotropic elements, As faras I understand him, Wiesner 
does not allude to this question when he speaks of there 
being a simple explanation of the relationship between 
* Continued from p. 582 
DD 
