Life and Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1Darwin, Charles
History
Life and Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1
Darwin, Charles
Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882; Naturalists -- Great Britain -- Biography; Naturalists -- Great Britain -- Correspondence
I must say something of his manner of working: one characteristic of it
was his respect for time; he never forgot how precious it was. This
was shown, for instance, in the way in which he tried to curtail his
holidays; also, and more clearly, with respect to shorter periods. He
would often say, that saving the minutes was the way to get work done;
he showed his love of saving the minutes in the difference he felt
between a quarter of an hour and ten minutes' work; he never wasted a
few spare minutes from thinking that it was not worth while to set to
work. I was often struck by his way of working up to the very limit of
his strength, so that he suddenly stopped in dictating, with the words,
"I believe I mustn't do any more." The same eager desire not to lose
time was seen in his quick movements when at work. I particularly
remember noticing this when he was making an experiment on the roots of
beans, which required some care in manipulation; fastening the little
bits of card upon the roots was done carefully and necessarily slowly,
but the intermediate movements were all quick; taking a fresh bean,
seeing that the root was healthy, impaling it on a pin, fixing it on
a cork, and seeing that it was vertical, etc; all these processes were
performed with a kind of restrained eagerness. He always gave one the
impression of working with pleasure, and not with any drag. I have an
image, too, of him as he recorded the result of some experiment, looking
eagerly at each root, etc., and then writing with equal eagerness. I
remember the quick movement of his head up and down as he looked from
the object to the notes.
He saved a great deal of time through not having to do things twice.
Although he would patiently go on repeating experiments where there
was any good to be gained, he could not endure having to repeat an
experiment which ought, if complete care had been taken, to have
succeeded the first time--and this gave him a continual anxiety that the
experiment should not be wasted; he felt the experiment to be sacred,
however slight a one it was. He wished to learn as much as possible
from an experiment, so that he did not confine himself to observing
the single point to which the experiment was directed, and his power of
seeing a number of other things was wonderful. I do not think he cared
for preliminary or rough observation intended to serve as guides and
to be repeated. Any experiment done was to be of some use, and in this
connection I remember how strongly he urged the necessity of keeping the
notes of experiments which failed, and to this rule he always adhered.
In the literary part of his work he had the same horror of losing time,
and the same zeal in what he was doing at the moment, and this made him
careful not to be obliged unnecessarily to read anything a second time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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