Page:Studies in Letters and Life (Woodberry, 1890).djvu/256

246 other equally good or better grounds, yet we might have had our great naturalist. The voyage of the Beagle, nevertheless, was the turning-point of Darwin's life. He obtained in the course of it the first real training of his mind; it brought before him several departments of science in such a way that he approached them with active and original thoughts, and was constantly forced into an inquiring and bold attitude toward the novel material he found; it gave him five years alone with science, and free from any near master to whom he might have formed the habit of deferring. Huxley does not overstate the material advantages that this training brought with it: "In Physical Geography, in Geology proper, in Geographical Distribution, and in Palæontology, he had acquired an extensive practical training during the voyage of the Beagle. He knew of his own knowledge the way in which the raw materials of these branches of science are acquired, and was therefore a most competent judge of the speculative strain they would bear. That which he needed, after his return to England, was a corresponding acquaintance with Anatomy and development, and their relations to Taxonomy, and