Take Darwin again for example, all the better because it is sometimes imagined that personality is unimportant in scientific writing. Probably few thoughtful and open-minded persons can read the “Origin of Species” without becoming Darwinists, yielding willingly, for the time at least, to his ascendency, and feeling him as a master. If we consider the traits that give him this authority, it will be found that they are of the same general nature as those already pointed out. As we read his chapters, and begin to build him up in our imaginations out of the subtle suggestions of style, we find ourselves thinking of him as, first of all, a true and simple man, a patient, sagacious seeker after the real. This makes us, so far as we are also simple seekers after the real, feel at home with him, forget suspicion, and incline to believe as he believes, even if we fail to understand his reasons—though no man leaves us less excuse for such failure. His aim is our aim—the truth, and as he is far more competent to achieve it in this field than we are, both because of natural aptitude and a lifetime of special research, we readily yield him the reins, the more so because he never for an instant demands it, but seems to appeal solely to facts. How many writers are there, even of much ability, who fail, primarily and irretrievably, because they do not make this favorable personal impression; because we divine something insincere, something impatient, some private aim that is not truth, which keeps us uncomfortably on our guard and makes us reluctant to follow them even when they appear most incontrovertible. Mr. Huxley suggested that Darwin harmed his case by excessive and unnecessary deference to the suggestions of his opponents; but it may well be that in the long run, and with the highest tribunal, this trait has added to his power. Many men have been convinced by the character of Darwin, by his obvious disinterestedness and lack of all controversial bias, who would never have followed Huxley. I have had occasion to notice that there is no way of making converts to the idea of evolution so effectual as to set people reading the “Origin of Species.” Spencerism comes and goes, but Darwinism is an abiding condition.