Page:Studies in Letters and Life (Woodberry, 1890).djvu/254

244 of Species is one long argument from the beginning to the end, and it has convinced not a few able men." His taste for collecting was a sine qua non, but it was this power of reasoning, however limited in range, that made him great; and it is as clearly to be seen in operation in his formative years as was the passion for collecting which was to feed it with material to work upon. His vivacity and energy no doubt counted much in winning for him the friendship of elder men, and he possessed that indefinable but potent quality of personal attractiveness; but Henslow in the beginning, as Lyell later, must have seen in him that happy conjunction of tastes and faculties which made his genius for science, or at least they must have perceived the promise of it.

All the circumstances of his life seem to have conspired to favor this special endowment. The very fact that the classics did nothing for him helped him: he was relieved from the confusion caused by complex and disturbing elements in a varied education; he had no difficulty in making his choice; he was not afterward drawn aside by the existence of other unsatisfied tastes,