The book was reviewed in the Academy, February 15th and March 1st, 1871, by Anton Dohrn. And see Darwin’s letter to Wallace, Zéfe and Letters, iii., 121.

of mind”* impressed him profoundly. Darwin, in his ever delightful candour, also tells us that the fiction which interested him was not of a high order. By contrast, Bates’s chief favourites were Thackeray and Thomas Hardy; he loved the one for the pathos and deep sympathy with our complex humanity which the shallow folk who call Thackeray cynical cannot see underlying the seemingly cold analysis of act and motive; he loved the other for the sweet country air that blows through the Woodlanders and Far from the Madding Crowd. He loathed the modern school of didactic, introspective, and sensational fiction.

The love of Homer, which his brother tells us he learned to read in hours stolen from sleep before sweeping out the warehouse, never cooled; Milton and his more immediate successors remained, as the favourite authors of his boyhood, favourites still; but when in recent years the volumes of Matthew Arnold’s poetry were lent him, he felt as did Keats on reading Chapman’s Homer—* a new planet swam into his ken.” Its classical note; its lucidity; its severity of restraint, as of Pegasus curbed; its saneness and sure-footedness; its gospel of cheerful acceptance of the inevitable, sung in stately verse in “Empedocles on Etna,” led him to give Arnold’s poetry the chief place in his assessment of the Victorian singers. Especially did the sonnet headed “Quiet Work ” express the ideal after which he strove:—

“¢ Of toil unsever’d from tranquillity; Of labour, that in lasting fruit outgrows Far noisier schemes, accomplished in repose, Too great for haste, too high for rivalry.”’

It is often said that a man’s religious belief concerns only himself. So far as the light value of the majority of people’s opinions on so high a matter goes, this is true; but the case is altered when applied to men whose words carry weight, or whose discoveries compel us to ask what is their bearing on those problems of human relations and destinies of which the past offered a solution that no longer satisfies the present, because it is not compatible with facts since brought to light.

Now there can be no doubt that the conclusions drawn from the facts which science has gathered as to the origin and succession and, withal, continuity of life-forms, are destructive of the current theories of man as differing absolutely in kind from the animals

Letter to Sir J. D. Hooker, Life and Letters, ii., 380,

Ixxxvi MEMOIR,

beneath him. It is on the assumption of fundamental differences between him and them—notably, the possession of a soul—that all theologies, whether barbaric or civilised, with their dogmas of relations between man and unseen powers and beings, are founded. The nature of those relations is expressed in creeds, and the recognition of them in rites and ceremonies, coarse or refined, according to the state of culture of the people performing them. To all which a large number of thoughtful men and women are opposed. Feeling the insoluble nature of the problems which surround human life, and which their line of inquiry has brought home with added force, they cannot accept what Professor Huxley calls “sham solutions.” They say with Darwin: “I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic.” This was Bates’s attitude, as expressed to his intimate friends, and, soon after his return from the Amazons, hinted at in his courteous reply to the late Mr. P H. Gosse, better known as a naturalist than as an ardent member of the exclusive sect called “ Plymouth Brethren.”

P: 771. Gosse to ff.. W. Bares:

‘‘ SANDHURST, TORQUAY, february 13th, 1860.

‘‘ MY DEAR SIR,

‘* Will you allow me the pleasure of asking your kind acceptance of the accompanying copy of my Acfinologia? I have read your numerous letters from Brazil published in the Zoolog7st with great interest, partly, doubtless, because I know a little of tropical collecting; and J have mentally followed you to and fro in the scenes and among the lovely insects, which you have so graphically described, with ever-increasing sympathy. From one or two expressions dropped here and there in your letters, I have formed a suspicion, moreover, that you are one of those who love the Lord Jesus, and, ifso, this would be an additional and a far stronger bond of sympathy between us. For there is no union so strong as that between the ‘ holy brotherhood, partakers of the heavenly calling,’ who by grace have been drawn to believe in Jesus, ‘‘Whether I am mistaken in this conclusion I do not know; but, at all events, I beg you to accept the volume as a token of my regard, and believe me your very sincere well-wisher in every sense,

«‘P. H. GOSSE,

TH. W: BATES, ESQ.

“« Are you likely to go out again?”?

The following draft of reply is preserved with the letter:—

‘““My DEAR SIR,

“* Accept my best thanks for the beautiful present you have made me, and the warm welcome which you make me on my return to England. You ask me whether Iam likely to gooutagain. I have no intention at present of doing

MEMOTR. Ixxxvii

so. Eleven years of tropical residence and travel, devoted to one pursuit, is a sufficient portion of life to be so spent. ‘‘T have amassed an extensive private collection, and intend to devote at least some years to the study of the species, with a view to publishing a ‘Montfauna’ of the Amazon valley. ‘¢ With regard to the other topic mentioned in your very kind letter, I must assure you that I think I have pursued, and still do pursue, the investigation of the wonderful and beautiful creatures that people the earth with a spirit of humility, admiration, and reverence. There will be differences of opinion between us, I have no doubt, on mere matters of undemonstrable dogmatic theology, but in the more essential points of true religious feeling and spirit, I hope in anything I may hereafter write and publish, to continue and increase the good opinion you appear to have of me. ef Et Wie Eig

Considering how full Bates’s days were with office routine, how full, too, his holidays with work always taken with him to his cottage at Folkestone; and, as already shown, in what variety of ways his time was trenched upon, it is surprising to those who knew him best how well he kept himself aw courant with the latest science. Doubtless, in this again, his early business training had taught him the secret of taking care of the minutes, leaving the hours to take care of themselves. Therefore, little escaped him. For example, among recent matters, acquaintance with the new evidence in support of the European origin of the “ Aryan” race; with the arguments of Weismann, in his Essays on Heredity, against the transmission of characters acquired during the lifetime of the parent; with the theory of “ Physiological Selection ” formulated by Romanes; was made in quick succession. Weismann’s book interested him keenly, and well-nigh moved him to written expression of his views, of which only a few lines are the outcome.* His verdict on it was—“ not proven”; and he inclined to that verdict being upheld. Romanes’s paper partly repelled him by an obscurity of

They are as follows: ‘‘ Weismann (p. 413) seems to wriggle out of the difficulty presented by Hoffman’s experiments on wild flowers. He admits that the double flowers obtained by continuous cultivation from normal wild flowers become hereditary, but says that the change was gradual, and at length affected the germ-plasm, z.¢., that the external influences (soil, cultivation, etc.) gradually produced a change in the germ-plasm, and that this was the cause of the double flowers. The germ-plasm is thus confessed to have been forced into conceiving a monstrosity of no use to the flower. If external influences can accomplish this, why cannot they bring about the establishment of a useful modification, like the long neck of a giraffe, z.e., in the same way by gradually modifying the germ-plasm through modification in the somatic-plasm? Hoffman's results were obtained gradually ‘in a greater or less number of generations.’ But this is all that Darwin would require.”

Ixxxviii MEMOIR.

style which usually indicates confusion of ideas,* but his main objection to it was its reversal of the method of the master whose theory it professed to supplement, in hasty publication of a theory which only long and patient observation of a wide group of facts can support or controvert. It may be gathered from what has been said that, impaired as was Bates’s bodily vigour, there was no trace of mental ossification; rather of unwearying powers of receptivity. There was a wonderful freshness in all that he said, and a wonderful charm in the way he said it. His sentences were broken by curious hyphen-like pauses. But how perfect they were in construction; clear-cut, pure English, so that, taken down (alas! that they were not taken down) not a word need have been altered or transposed. Never did the listener leave without being the richer for some fruitful idea; some fresh aspect of familiar things, evidencing the power of the speaker in seizing upon the relation of a particular fact or theory to the totality of knowledge. His thoughts never moved “ in such small circles that five minutes’ conversation gave you an arc long enough to determine the whole curve.”

But even more than the gentle voice, the winning smile, and the affectionate greeting, the friends of this sincere, this guileless, this self-reliant man will cherish, as the chief lesson of his life—especially in an age of Stavm und Drang, of pushing to the fore, of clamour for priority of discovery of a new sun-spot or asteroid—the wholesomeness of possessing the soul in patience, of work done in quiet, and of finding alike impulse and content in the thought that, so far as a man’s work is sterling and contributory, “ natural selection ” will take care of it. Few titular distinctions came to Bates, and these few were unsought. The Zoological and Linnean Societies elected him as honorary Fellow, the one in 1863, the other in 1872; the Entomological Society elected him twice as President, namely, in 1869 and 1878; other chairs were offered him from time to time, and declined, partly on the ground of health, but chiefly through morbid dread of publicity; and it was not until 1881 that the Royal Society tardily added to its prestige by electing him a Fellow. Various continental and American learned societies paid him the compliment of corresponding membership, and the late Emperor of Brazil made him a Chevalier of the Order of the Rose, the badge of which, on the rare occasions that he wore it, he did his best to conceal.

Cf. Mr. Thiselton Dyer’s Letter on ‘‘ Mr. Romanes’s Paradox,” in Nature, Nov. 1, 1888.

Heavy grief—which he bore in silence, but not without deeper scoring of his rugged features—befel him in the death of his eldest child, Alice, in 1891, after a brief married life; the gastric derangement which had troubled him since boyhood took an aggravated form in the autumn of that year, and he gradually became thinner and weaker. But he had grown so accustomed to the daily battle between flesh and spirit, that he paid too little heed to symptoms which his friends looked upon as serious, and he could not be persuaded to take proffered rest and change. In the beginning of February 1892 an acute attack of influenza, complicated with bronchitis, supervened, and to this he succumbed on the morning of Tuesday, the sixteenth of that month.

Rarely does a man pass away so widely loved and mourned. The genuine sorrow at his death found expression in the tribute paid to his memory, not only by his colleagues of the Geographical Society, but in the letters of sympathy which his widow and children received from every quarter; from the veteran companion of his travels to the youngest member of that band of explorers to whom he, Nestor among them, had been “ guide, philosopher, and friend.”

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