. Excursions of an evolutionist. that was mortal ofCharles Darwin is borne to its lastresting-place in Westminster Abbey,by the side of Sir Isaac Newton, it seems a fit-ting occasion to utter a few words of tribute tothe memory of the beautiful and glorious lifethat has just passed away from us. ThoughMr. Darwin had more than completed histhreescore and ten years, and though his lifehad been rich in achisvement and crownedwith success such as is but seldom vouchsafedto man, yet the news of his death has none theless impressed us with a sense of sudden andpremature bereavement. For on the one h
. Excursions of an evolutionist. that was mortal ofCharles Darwin is borne to its lastresting-place in Westminster Abbey,by the side of Sir Isaac Newton, it seems a fit-ting occasion to utter a few words of tribute tothe memory of the beautiful and glorious lifethat has just passed away from us. ThoughMr. Darwin had more than completed histhreescore and ten years, and though his lifehad been rich in achisvement and crownedwith success such as is but seldom vouchsafedto man, yet the news of his death has none theless impressed us with a sense of sudden andpremature bereavement. For on the one handthe time would never have come when those ofus who had learned the inestimable worth ofsuch a teacher and friend could have felt readyto part with him ; and on the other hand was one whom the gods, for love of him,had endowed with perpetual youth, so that hisdeath could never seem otherwise than prema-ture. As Mr. Galton has well said, the periodof physical youth — say from the fifteenth to308 Charles Robert Dart. IN MEMORIAM: CHARLES DARWIN the twenty-second year — is, with most men,the only available period for acquiring the in-tellectual habits and amassing the stores ofknowledge that are to form their equipment forthe work of a life-time ; but in the case of menof the highest order this period is simply aperiod of seven years, neither more nor lessvaluable than any other seven years. There is,now and then, a mind — perhaps one in four orfive millions—which in early youth thinks thethoughts of mature manhood, and which in oldage retains the flexibility, the receptiveness,the keen appetite for new impressions, that arecharacteristic of the fresh season of youth. Sucha mind as this was Mr. Darwins. To the lasthe was eager for new facts and suggestions, tothe last he held his judgments in readiness forrevision ; and to this unfailing freshness of spiritwas joined a sagacity which, naturally great, hadbeen refined and strengthened by half a centurymost fruit
Size: 1375px × 1817px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookidcu3192401411, bookyear1902
