THE LIFE AND WORK OF DARWIN 223 



Darwin's Method of Work. 



On this subject his own estimate and account are 

 most helpful. His method was eminently inductive, 

 consisting in the accumulation of large numbers of 

 facts, which he compelled to yield up their secrets. 

 He had the greatest distrust of deductive reasoning, 

 and objected to his grandfather Erasmus Darwin's 

 "Zoonomia," because of the undue proportion of 

 speculation to the facts given. He observes : 

 " From my early youth I have had the strongest 

 desire to understand or explain whatever I observed ; 

 that is, to group all facts under some general 

 laws. These causes combined have given me the 

 patience to reflect or ponder for any number of 

 years over any unexplained problem." Professor 

 Huxley notes how " that imperious necessity of 

 seeking for causes, which Nature had laid upon him, 

 impelled, indeed compelled him, to inquire the how 

 and the why of the facts, and their bearing on his 

 general views." 



His patience was extraordinary, and the dogged 

 insistence with which he stuck to a subject and 

 followed a clue wherever it led, was wonderful. He 

 spent eleven years over his investigations on orchids ; 

 sixteen years over those on the insectivorous plants ; 

 the " Origin of Species " was the result of twenty- 

 one years' work; and "Earthworms" that of forty- 

 four years of observations and experiments. He 

 had an unusual power of noticing things which 

 easily escape attention, and of observing them care- 

 fully. 



