This pure love has, however, been much aided by the ambition to be esteemed by my fellow naturalists.From my early youth I have had the strongest desire to understand or explain whatever I observed,--that is, to group all facts under some general laws.These causes combined have given me the patience to reflect or ponder for any number of years over any unexplained problem.As far as I can judge, I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men.I have steadily endeavoured to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as facts are shown to be opposed to it.Indeed, I have had no choice but to act in this manner, for with the exception of the Coral Reefs, I cannot remember a single first-formed hypothesis which had not after a time to be given up or greatly modified.This has naturally led me to distrust greatly deductive reasoning in the mixed sciences.On the other hand, I am not very sceptical,--a frame of mind which I believe to be injurious to the progress of science.A good deal of scepticism in a scientific man is advisable to avoid much loss of time, but I have met with not a few men, who, I feel sure, have often thus been deterred from experiment or observations, which would have proved directly or indirectly serviceable.
In illustration, I will give the oddest case which I have known.A gentleman (who, as I afterwards heard, is a good local botanist) wrote to me from the Eastern counties that the seed or beans of the common field- bean had this year everywhere grown on the wrong side of the pod.I wrote back, asking for further information, as I did not understand what was meant; but I did not receive any answer for a very long time.I then saw in two newspapers, one published in Kent and the other in Yorkshire, paragraphs stating that it was a most remarkable fact that "the beans this year had all grown on the wrong side." So I thought there must be some foundation for so general a statement.Accordingly, I went to my gardener, an old Kentish man, and asked him whether he had heard anything about it, and he answered, "Oh, no, sir, it must be a mistake, for the beans grow on the wrong side only on leap-year, and this is not leap- year." I then asked him how they grew in common years and how on leap-years, but soon found that he knew absolutely nothing of how they grew at any time, but he stuck to his belief.