224 



MY LIFE 



[Chap. 



time I could be said to have shown special superiority in any 

 of the higher mental faculties, but I possessed a strong desire to 

 know the causes of things, a great love of beauty in form and 

 colour, and a considerable but not excessive desire for order 

 and arrangement in whatever I had to do. If I had one 

 distinct mental faculty more prominent than another, it was 

 the power of correct reasoning from a review of the known 

 facts in any case to the causes or laws which produced them, 

 and also in detecting fallacies in the reasoning of other persons. 

 This power has greatly helped me in all my writings, especially 

 those on natural history and sociology. The determination 

 of the direction in which I should use these powers was due 

 to my possession in a high degree of the two mental qualities 

 usually termed emotional or moral, an intense appreciation of 

 the beauty, harmony and variety in nature and in all natural 

 phenomena, and an equally strong passion for justice as 

 between man and man — an abhorrence of all tyranny, all 

 compulsion, all unnecessary interference with the liberty of 

 others. These characteristics, combined with certain favour- 

 able conditions, some of which have already been referred to, 

 have determined the direction of the pursuits and inquiries in 

 which I have spent a large portion of my life. 



It will be well to state here certain marked deficiencies 

 in my mental equipment which have also had a share in 

 determining the direction of my special activities. My 

 greatest, though not perhaps most important, defect is my 

 inability to perceive the niceties of melody and harmony in 

 music ; in common language, I have no ear for music. But 

 as I have a fair appreciation of time, expression, and general 

 effect, I am deeply affected by grand, pathetic, or religious 

 music, and can at once tell when the heart and soul of the 

 musician is in his performance, though any number of tech- 

 nical errors, false notes, or disharmonies would pass unnoticed. 

 Another and more serious defect is in verbal memory, which, 

 combined with the inability to reproduce vocal sounds, has 

 rendered the acquirement of all foreign languages very difficult 

 and distasteful. This, with my very imperfect school training, 

 added to my shyness and want of confidence, must have caused 



