I admit,
however, that the book is hard and laborious reading; and, moreover,
that the writer appears to have predetermined from the commencement
to reject all ornament, and simply to argue from beginning to end,
from point to point, till he conceived that he had made his case
sufficiently clear.
C. I agree with you, and I do not like his book partly on that very
account. He seems to have no eye but for the single point at which
he is aiming.
F. But is not that a great virtue in a writer?
C. A great virtue, but a cold and hard one.
F. In my opinion it is a grave and wise one. Moreover, I conceive
that the judicial calmness which so strongly characterises the whole
book, the absence of all passion, the air of extreme and anxious
caution which pervades it throughout, are rather the result of
training and artificially acquired self-restraint than symptoms of a
cold and unimpassioned nature; at any rate, whether the lawyer-like
faculty of swearing both sides of a question and attaching the full
value to both is acquired or natural in Darwin's case, you will admit
that such a habit of mind is essential for any really valuable and
scientific investigation.
