r from a royal line of ancestry. No
man was ever more blest--more richly endowed by his parents with love
and intellect--than Darwin. And no man ever repaid the debt of love more
fully--all that he had received he gave again.

Darwin is the Saint of Science. He proves the possible; and when mankind
shall have evolved to a point where such men will be the rule, not the
exception--as one in a million--then, and not until then, can we say we
are a civilized people.

Charles Darwin was not only the greatest thinker of his time (with
possibly one exception), but in his simplicity and earnestness, in his
limpid love for truth--his perfect willingness to abandon his opinion if
he were found to be wrong--in all these things he proved himself the
greatest man of his time.

Yet it is absurd to try to separate the scientist from the father,
neighbor and friend. Darwin's love for truth as a scientist was what
lifted him out of the fog of whim and prejudice and set him apart as a
man.

He had no time to hate. He had no time to indulge in foolish debates and
struggle for rhetorical mastery--he had his work to do.

That statesmen like Gladstone misquoted him, and churchmen like
Wilberforce reviled him--these things were as naught to Darwin--his face
was toward the sunrising. To be able to know the truth, and to state it,
were vital issues: whether the truth was accepted by this man or that
was quite immaterial, except possibly to the man himself. There was no
resentment in Darwin's nature.

Only love is immortal--hate is a negative condition. It is love that
animates, beautifies, benefits, refines, creates. So firmly was this
truth fixed in the heart of Darwin that throughout his long life the
only things he feared and shunned were hate and prejudice. "They hinder
and blind a man to truth," he said--"a scientist must only love."

* * * * *

Emerson has been called the culminating flower of seven generations of
New England culture. Charles Darwin seems a similar culminating product.

Surely he showed rare judgment in the selection of his grandparents. His
grandfather on his father's side was Doctor Erasmus Darwin, a poet, a
naturalist, and a physician so discerning that he once wrote: "The
science of medicine will some time resolve itself into a science of
prevention rather than a matter of cure. Man was made to be well, and
the best medicine I know of is an active and intelligent interest in th