CHAPTER XI. DARWIN'S PLACE IN THE EVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT
CHAPTER XII. THE NET RESULT
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From the environment let us turn to the individual; from the world in which the man moved to the man who moved in it, and was in time destined to move it.
Who was he, and whence did he derive his exceptional energy and intellectual panoply?
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Have we not here the very beginnings of Charles Darwin? Do we not see, in these profound and fundamental suggestions, not merely hints as to the evolution of evolution, but also as to the evolution of the evolutionist?
On the other hand, though Erasmus Darwin defined a fool to his friend Edgeworth as 'a man who never tried an experiment in his life,' he was wanting himself in the rigorous and patient inductive habit which so strikingly distinguished his grandson Charles. That trait, as we shall presently see, the biological chief of the nineteenth century derived in all probability from another root of his genealogical tree. Erasmus Darwin gave us brilliant suggestions rather than cumulative proof: he apologised in his 'Zoonomia' for 'many conjectures not supported by accurate investigation or conclusive experiments,' Such an apology would have been simply impossible to the painstaking spirit of his grandson Charles.
