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DARWIN AND HUMBOLDT. 



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. Darwin's 

 death is a wholly irreparable loss. 

 And this not merely because of his 

 wonderfully genial, simple, and gener- 

 <ous nature ; lps 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, marvelous as was 

 his tenacious industry, under physical 

 difficulties which would have convert- 

 ed 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 inti- 

 macy with involuntary veneration, 

 but a certain intense and almost pas- 

 sionate 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 gi-eat speculative 

 powers within due bounds ; which 

 compelled him to undertake the pro- 

 digious labors of original investiga- 

 tion 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, 

 out 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 Dar- 

 win without being reminded of So- 

 crates. There was the same desire 

 to find some one wiser than himself ; 

 the same belief in the sovereignty of 



reason ; the same ready humor ; 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 De- 

 mocritus, with results which are as 

 the substance of which their specula- 

 tion were anticipatory shadows. 



The due appreciation or even 

 enumeration of these results is neither 

 practicable nor desirable at this mo- 

 ment. 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, re- 

 viled by bigots, and ridiculed by all 

 the world; he lived long enough 

 to see it, chiefly by his own efforts, 

 irrefragably established in science, 

 inseparably incorporated with the 

 common thoughts of men, and only 

 hated and feared by those who would 

 revile, but dare not. What shall a 

 man more desire than this? Once 

 more the image of Socrates rises un- 

 bidden, and the noble peroration of 

 the Apology rings in our ears as if it 

 were Charles Darwin's farewell : 



"The hour of departure has ar- 

 rived, and we go our ways — I to die, 

 and you to live. Which is the better, 

 God only knows." 



II. CHARACTER AND LIFE. 



BY G. J. ROMANES, F.R.S. 



The object of this notice is to give 

 a brief account of the life, and a pro- 

 portionately still more brief account 

 of the work of Mr. Darwin. But 

 while we recognize in him perhaps the 

 greatest genius and the most fertile 

 thinker, certainly the most important 

 generalizer and one of the few most 



