Darwin’s intellectual significance no one will question; and his self-confidence or faith was equally remarkable, and not at all inconsistent with his modesty. In his case it seems a faith in truth itself, so wholly is the self we find in his books identified with the striving after truth. As an act of faith his twenty years of collecting and brooding over the facts bearing upon the principle he had divined, was an exploit of the same nature as that of Columbus, sailing westward for months into an unknown ocean, to a goal which no one else could see. And with what simple confidence does he take his stand upon the truth thus won, and apply it to the geological history of the globe, or the rise of the human body and mind. A good illustration of his faith is his assertion, in the face of ridicule, that the existence of an orchid with a narrow neck eleven inches long proved the existence of a moth with a tongue of equal length. The moth, at that time unknown, was subsequently discovered.[87] To illustrate the same principles in a wholly different phase of thought, we might take Charles Lamb. Lamb, too, attracts us first of all by a human and congenial personality. We feel that in the kinds of sentiment with which he deals he is at home and adequate, is ourselves and more than we, with a deeper pathos, a richer, more audacious humor, a truer sensibility. He, too, enlarges life by access to novel and acceptable modes of being; and he is always boldly and simply himself. It is a poor notion of Lamb that does not recognize that he was, in his way, a man of character, conviction, and faith. A similar analysis might be applied to great writers of other sorts—poets, historians, and moralists; also to painters, sculptors, actors, singers, to every potent personality after its kind. While there is infinite variety in leadership—according to the characters of the persons concerned, the points at which they come in contact, the means of communication between them, and so on—there is, nevertheless, a likeness of principle everywhere present. There is no such radical and complete divergence of the conditions of power in the various fields of activity as is sometimes imagined. While there are great differences, they may be looked upon as specific rather than generic. We may always expect to find a human nature sufficiently broad and sound—at least in those phases most apparent in the special means of expression chosen—to be felt as representative; also some timely contribution added to the range of thought or feeling, and faith in or loyalty to this peculiar contribution.