It is an unimportant detail that Darwin read this book two years
_after_ his return from his voyage, while I read it _before_ I
went abroad, and it was a sudden recollection of its teachings
that caused the solution to flash upon me. I attach much
importance, however, to the large amount of solitude we both
enjoyed during our travels, which, at the most impressionable
period of our lives, gave us ample time for reflection on the
phenomena we were daily observing.
This view, of the combination of certain mental faculties and
external conditions that led Darwin and myself to an identical
conception, also serves to explain why none of our precursors or
contemporaries hit upon what is really so very simple a solution
of the great problem. Such evolutionists as Robert Chambers,
Herbert Spencer, and Huxley, though of great intellect, wide
knowledge, and immense power of work, had none of them the special
turn of mind that makes the collector and the species-man; while
they all--as well as the equally great thinker on similar lines,
Sir Charles Lyell--became in early life immersed in different
lines of research which engaged their chief attention.
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