328 Charles Darwin : a Farewell Offering. [June, 
able, or arbitrary, but merely a series of causes and effects 
capable of being foretold as soon as all the conditions of the 
case were fairly stated. But to make similar concessions 
with regard to the organic world* is to see the arbitrary im- 
perilled in its last stronghold. Hence we may understand, 
if we cannot altogether excuse, the rancour stirred up by 
the “ Origin of Species,” and still more by the “ Descent of 
Man.” The blow given to human vanity and egotism could 
not be forgiven. We see, too, what Darwin has effected. 
He has not merely given to Natural History internal co- 
herence, method, and objeCt ; he has made the reign of law 
complete in every class of phenomena ; he has opened to 
the world a still wider horizon than that disclosed by Newton 
— a horizon which extends over the domains of psychology, 
social science, and philosophic history, with the arts founded 
thereon. It is doubtful if so widespread and so thorough- 
going a revolution was ever before effected, — effected, too, 
not by the destructive but by the constructive method. On 
this ground therefore, and quite independently of his special 
merits in Biology and Zoology, I claim for Darwin a philo- 
sophic rank never surpassed. 
An eminent scientific man, and a personal friend of the 
departed, has recently compared him to Socrates. I can 
trace between the two thinkers few points of likeness, but 
rather a most striking contrast. If we look to their respeCIive 
methods we find in Socrates the busy, prying gossip of a 
great city, — questioning, discussing, seeking truth from men, 
from words, and from notions and modes of thought. Nay, 
at times he would seem more anxious to confute than to 
instruCl either himself or others. Darwin, though kindly 
and genial among friends and fellow-labourers, was the 
silent, patient, solitary inquirer ; haunting not the streets or 
the market-places, but the woods, the shore, the deserts, the 
mountains, the garden, the laboratory; examining faCts, 
caring little what names had been given to them by the 
ignorant, or what notions had heretofore been formed anent 
them. He was the observer, the experimentalist, the man 
of things as decidedly as Socrates was the dialectician, the 
* It is strange and sad to note how we allow ourselves to juggle and be 
juggled with the words “organ,” “organic,” “ organism,” &c. If any one 
formally asks us the meaning of “ organ,” we refer him to the Greek lexicon, 
where he will find ’ Organon rendered “ a machine, a tool, an instrument.” 
But the next moment we forget all our etymology, and speak of the organic as 
a mjsterious antithesisto the mechanical. The Dutch more happily make use 
of a word “ understanded of the people.” They call an organ “werk tuig ” 
( = the Geiman “werk zeug”, and “ organic nature ” they teim simply “ de 
bewerktuigde natur. 
