Per Contra 24.5 
them to be the ones which should most command our 
admiration. We are in the world ; surely so long as we are 
in it we should be of it, and not give ourselves airs as 
though we were too good for our generation, and would lay 
ourselves out to please any other by preference. Mr. 
Darwin played for his own generation, and he got in the 
very amplest measure the recognition which he endeavoured, 
as we all do, to obtain. 
His success was, no doubt, in great measure due to the 
fact that he knew our little ways, and humoured them ; 
but if he had not had little ways of his own, he never could 
have been so much au fait with ours. He knew, for example, 
we should be pleased to hear that he had taken his boots 
off so as not to disturb his worms when watching them by 
night, so he told us of this, and we were delighted. He 
knew we should like his using the word “ sag,” so he used 
it,* and we said it was beautiful. True, he used it wrongly, 
for he was writing about tesselated pavement, and builders 
assure me that “‘ sag’ is a word which applies to timber 
only, but this is not to the point ; the point was, that Mr. 
Darwin should have used a word that we did not under- 
stand ; this showed that he had a vast fund of knowledge 
at his command about all sorts of practical details with 
which he might have well been unacquainted. We do not 
deal the same measure to man and to the lower animals 
in the matter of intelligence ; the less we understand these 
last, the less, we say, not we, but they can understand ; 
whereas the less we can understand a man, the more 
intelligent we are apt to think him. No one should neglect 
by-play of tbis description ; if I live to be strong enough 
to carry it through, I mean to play “ cambre,” and I 
shall spell it “camber.” I wonder Mr. Darwin never 
abused this word. Laugh at him, however, as we may for 
having said “sag,” if he had not been the kind of man 
to know the value of these little hits, neither would he 
* “ Formation of Vegetable Mould,” etc., p. 217. Murray, 1882. 
