Page:Studies in Letters and Life (Woodberry, 1890).djvu/257

Rh he acquired this by his Cirripede work." It is to be noticed that during his voyage in the Beagle he became convinced of the "wonderful superiority of Lyell's manner of treating geology" over every other author's. This is an illustration, like that drawn from Paley, of the character of his mind as primarily a reasoning mind; for what he recognized in Lyell was a method. It was on this voyage, too, that he became ambitious; he began to believe that he might add to the stock of human knowledge, and the stimulation of the welcome his success was meeting in England was evidently keenly felt. He put his whole heart into the work, and few passages are more stirring than those which describe his zeal in his first really scientific enthusiasm, after he had given up his gun as of less use than his eye, and had found sport, even with his fond love of it, an inferior pleasure to the pursuit of knowledge; then, alone in the Andes and the Southern Ocean, he came to his majority.

Mr. Huxley, in the passage cited, has noted the need Darwin had for further training, particularly as a naturalist. He obtained this by his work on the Cirripedes,