Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11
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Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11
Literature -- Collections
I, who write of him here, had the great privilege of staying with him
from time to time at Down, and I find it difficult to record the
strangely mixed feeling of reverential admiration and extreme personal
attachment and affection with which I came to regard him. I have never
known or heard of a man who combined with such exceptional intellectual
power so much cheeriness and love of humor, and such ideal kindness,
courtesy, and modesty. Owing to the fact that my father was a naturalist
and man of letters, I as a boy knew Henslow and Lyell, Darwin's
teachers, and have myself enjoyed a naturalist's walk with the one and
the geological discussions of the other. I first saw Darwin himself in
1853, when he was recommended to my boyish imagination as "a man who had
ridden up a mountain on the back of a tortoise" (in the Galapagos
Islands)! When I began to work at and write on zoology he showed his
kindness of heart by writing to me in praise of my first book: he wrote
to me later in answer to my appeal for guidance, that "physiological
experiment on animals is justifiable for real investigation; but not for
mere damnable and detestable curiosity. It is a subject which makes me
sick with horror, so I will not say another word about it, else I shall
not sleep to-night." When I prosecuted Slade the spiritualistic
impostor, and obtained his conviction at Bow Street as a common rogue,
Darwin was much interested, and after the affair was over wrote to say
that he was sure that I had been at great expense in effecting what he
considered to be a public benefit, and that he should like to be allowed
to contribute ten pounds to the cost of the prosecution. He was ever
ready in this way to help by timely gifts of money what he thought to be
a good cause, as for instance in the erection of the Zoological Station
of Naples by Dr. Anton Dohrn, to which he gave a hundred pounds. His
most characteristic minor trait which I remember, was his sitting in his
drawing-room at Down in his high-seated arm-chair, and whilst laughing
at some story or joke, slapping his thigh with his right hand and
exclaiming, with a quite innocent and French freedom of speech, "O my
God! That's very good. That's capital." Perhaps one of the most
interesting things that I ever heard him say was when, after describing
to me an experiment in which he had placed under a bell-jar some pollen
from a male flower, together with an unfertilized female flower, in
order to see whether, when kept at a distance but under the same jar,
the one would act in any way on the other, he remarked:--"That's a
fool's experiment. But I love fools' experiments. I am always making
them." A great deal might be written as comment on that statement.
Perhaps the thoughts which it suggests may be summed up by the
proposition that even a wise experiment when made by a fool generally
leads to a false conclusion, but that fools' experiments conducted by a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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