226 THE DARWINIAN THEORY 



perienced the greatest difficulty in writing intelligible 

 English, and took much pains to accomplish this. 

 "There seems," he says, "to be a sort of fatality in 

 my mind leading me to put at first my statements or 

 propositions in a wrong or awkward form." His 

 tone of writing was courteous and conciliatory, and 

 he deliberately avoided controversy. 



The closing scene in Darwin's life was in the 

 early months of the year 1882, when his health 

 underwent a change for the worse, and on the 19th 

 of April he died. On the 24th he was buried in 

 Westminster Abbey, in accordance with the general 

 feeling that such a man should not go to the grave 

 without public recognition of the greatness of his 

 work. 



And of that work, how shall we estimate its 

 value ? To form any notion, however inadequate, 

 we must try to realise the world into which he was 

 born ; to picture to ourselves what naturalists up to 

 his time were doing, and what were their aims, 

 ambitions and methods. 



From the time of Linnaeus the majority of 

 naturalists were devoted to classifying, naming, and 

 labelling animals, and then leaving them. Others 

 went further and studied more deeply. Increase of 

 knowledge led to constantly increasing specialisation 

 and division of labour ; each worker coming to look 

 on his own department as more or less isolated and 

 independent. There was no bond of union between 

 these men, no system, and no true basis of classi- 

 fication. 



What Darv/in did was to put the backbone into 



