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" Beagle," when only one book could be carried on an expedition, 

 chose a volume of Milton for his companion. 



Industry, intellectual interests, the capacity for taking pleasure in 

 deductive reasoning, in observation, in experiment, no less than in 

 the highest works of imagination : where these qualities are present 

 any rational system of education should surely be able to make some- 

 thing of them. Unfortunately for Darwin, the Shrewsbury Gram- 

 mar School, though good of its kind, was an institution of a type 

 universally prevalent in this country half a century ago, and by no 

 means extinct at the present day. The education given was " strictly 

 classical," " especial attention " being "paid to verse-making," while 

 all other subjects, except a little ancient geography and history, were 

 ignored. Whether, as in some famous English schools at that date 

 and much later, elementary arithmetic was also left out of sight does 

 not appear ; but the instruction in Euclid which gave Charles Darwin 

 so much satisfaction was certainly supplied by a private tutor. That 

 a boy, even in his leisure hours, should permit himself to be interested 

 in any bat book-learning seems to have been regarded as little better 

 than an outrage by the head master, who thought it his duty to 

 administer a public rebuke to young Darwin for wasting his time rn 

 such a contemptible subject as chemistry. English composition and 

 literature, modern languages, modern history, modern geography, 

 appear to have been considered to be as despicable as chemistry. 



For seven long years, Darwin got through his appointed tasks ; 

 construed without cribs, learned by rote whatever was demanded, 

 and concocted his verses in approved schoolboy fashion. And the 

 result, as it appeared to his mature judgment, was simply negative. 

 "The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank." 

 (I, p. 32.) On the other hand, the extraneous chemical exercises, 

 which the head master treated so contumeliously, are gratefully 

 spoken of as the "best part" of his education while at school. 

 Such is the judgment of the scholar on the school; as might be 

 expected, it has its counterpart in the judgment of the school on the 

 scholar. The collective intelligence of the staff of Shrewsbury School 

 could find nothing but dull mediocrity in Charles Darwin. The mind 

 that found satisfaction in knowledge, but very little in mere learning, 

 that could appreciate literature, but had no particular aptitude for 

 grammatical exercises, appeared to the " strictly classical " pedagogue 

 to be no mind at all. As a matter of fact, Darwin's school education 

 left him ignorant of almost all the things which it would have been 

 well for him to know, and untrained in all the things it would 

 have been useful for him to be able to do, in after life. Drawing, 

 practice in English composition, and instruction in the elements of 

 the physical sciences, would not only have been infinitely valuable 

 to him in reference to his future career, but would have furnished 



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