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diff --git a/77622-0.txt b/77622-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..af5162f --- /dev/null +++ b/77622-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4759 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77622 *** + + + + + BY THE SAME AUTHOR + + + MEN OF THE OLD STONE AGE + THE ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF LIFE + THE AGE OF MAMMALS + EVOLUTION OF MAMMALIAN MOLAR TEETH + FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN + EVOLUTION AND RELIGION + HUXLEY AND EDUCATION + + + + + IMPRESSIONS OF + GREAT NATURALISTS + + + + + IMPRESSIONS OF GREAT NATURALISTS + REMINISCENCES OF DARWIN, HUXLEY, BALFOUR, COPE AND OTHERS + + BY + + HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN + + RESEARCH PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY; SENIOR GEOLOGIST + IN UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY; PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF + NATURAL HISTORY + + + ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS + + + CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS + NEW YORK · LONDON + 1924 + + + COPYRIGHT, 1913, 1924, BY + CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS + + COPYRIGHT, 1909, 1924, BY SCIENCE + COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY GINN AND COMPANY + COPYRIGHT, 1896, 1909, 1913, 1924, BY POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY + + Printed in the United States of America + + +[Illustration: Emblem of The Scribner Press featuring an open book, a +lamp, and decorative wreaths.] + + + + + TO + THE MEMORY OF + THE NATURALISTS, EXPLORERS, AND AUTHORS + WHOSE CREATIVE LIVES + ARE BRIEFLY TOUCHED UPON HERE + + “... those immortal dead who live again + In minds made better by their presence: live + In pulses stirr’d to generosity, + In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn + For miserable aims that end with self, + In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, + And with their mild persistence urge man’s search + To vaster issues.” + —GEORGE ELIOT + + + + + AUTOBIOGRAPHIC FOREWORD + + +There is no joy like the joy of creative work. To my mind all great men +are creative, and among the greatest men are the creative naturalists +from Aristotle to Darwin, whose self-effacing lives and enduring works +are our most precious possessions. I like a naturalist better than a +scientist, because there is less of the ego in him, and in a naturalist +like Darwin the ego entirely disappears and through his vision we see +Nature with the least human aberration. These “Impressions” may show the +young and aspiring naturalists of our day that in the highest creative +vision there is the least of self and the most of Nature. In the twelve +lives chosen from the fifty-seven men and women of whom I have +written,[1] I include Roosevelt, Bryce and Butler because as intrepid +explorers and observers they show some of the highest qualities of the +naturalist. + + +I had the good fortune to lead my student life between 1873 and 1880 +under the spiritual, moral, and intellectual influence of the great men +of the Victorian age, the poets Wordsworth and Tennyson, as well as the +natural philosophers Wallace, Darwin, Huxley, and Cope. The scientific +thought of the first half of the nineteenth century was permeated with +the theism of the Special Creation theory of the universe. In those +fateful days of intellectual doubt between the false theism of Special +Creation and the true theism of Evolution, I fortunately came under the +influence of a series of broad-minded teachers, of Arnold Guyot in +geology, of James McCosh in psychology and philosophy, of William M. +Sloane in the philosophy of Kant, of William H. Welch in anatomy and the +study of the Cell; of each of these incomparable teachers I like to +recall that “I too sat at the feet of Gamaliel.” McCosh numbered me in +his favorite group of “eager young men” with the embryonic geologist +Scott and the embryonic philosopher Ormond. Inspired with +self-confidence by him in 1878, I took up original research in +psychology and prepared a questionnaire on visual memory in co-operation +with Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin, publishing four +psychological papers at the same time that I was writing my first +palæontological papers on fossil mammals discovered in the Rocky +Mountains in 1877–1878. This work also fitted me to write, ten years +later, “From the Greeks to Darwin,” my inaugural lectures in the +Columbia University Professorship of Biology, the first of a series of +volumes which I edited. While McCosh, to whom I dedicated this +philosophical work, was eager and impetuous and urged the beginning of +observation and research at once, Arnold Guyot, distinguished in the +glaciology of Switzerland, taught that the way of learning is long and +very arduous. I well recall the motto he gave me when I was groaning +over the interminable difficulties of preparing fossils, a motto derived +from Hippocrates and the patient Romans: + + Art is long and difficult; criticism is short and easy. + +This indeed is the message of Geology to the student mind and the +underlying reason why Charles Lyell, a geologist, became the master of +Charles Darwin, a biologist. Only from the eternal truths of the earth’s +past history can the immediate present of Life be understood. + +Two of my eager Princeton comrades felt the need of anatomy as much as I +did, and without the aid of a teacher we started the dissection of a +fish, guided by Huxley’s “Comparative Anatomy of the Vertebrates.” This +laborious work on the porgy was followed by an anatomical escapade on +the limb of _Homo sapiens_, part of a human cadaver, in one of the +unused rooms of the Astronomical Observatory which we converted into a +dissecting-room. The venerable astronomer, Professor Stephen Alexander, +wondered at the source of the strange odors that filled the observatory, +but never discovered the cause! These untaught and surreptitious studies +in anatomy led to my coming, in the autumn of 1878, under one of the +greatest teachers of anatomy this country has produced, William H. +Welch, then a junior officer in the Bellevue Medical College. Fresh from +the leading laboratories of Germany, Welch used the Teutonic method I +had not known before, of introducing each of his discourses on the +various kinds of cells with an historical review of discovery, showing +how step by step one discovery in science leads to another. I felt for +the first time the inspiration of the special virtue of German research, +the most thorough and painstaking the world has ever known, the virtue +of _grundlichkeit_, of going to the very bottom of things. Thus were +drawing to a close my six American years when the question of whether I +should go to Germany or to England was decided by a letter from Kitchen +Parker, the distinguished English comparative anatomist and friend of +Huxley, who personally advised me to go to London to study under Huxley +and to Cambridge to study under Balfour. + +Never shall I forget my first impression of Francis Maitland Balfour as +I met him in the great court of Trinity College of Cambridge, in the +spring of 1879, to apply for admission to his course in embryology. At +the time he was twenty-eight years of age and I was twenty-one. I felt +that I was in the presence of a superior being, of a type to which I +could never possibly attain, and I did not lose this impression +throughout the spring months in which he lectured on comparative +embryology at Cambridge and in which we enjoyed many long afternoons of +bicycle riding on the level roads of the Fens. I always felt that +Balfour lived in a higher atmosphere, in another dimension of +intellectual space. Not that he was aloof—far from it, for he was always +in closest and most generous touch with the minds of his students; he +made you feel that you had a mind and that your opinion and observation +were of value, although you knew all the while that your mind was still +embryonic and your opinions of the most tentative order. His was by far +the most balanced mind among all the English biologists. He was at the +time absorbed in embryology, which was the reigning biological +discipline of the day. His untimely death in the Swiss Alps in the year +1882 was a tragic loss, because English biologic thought soon entered +the long period of confusion and lack of balance that have characterized +it to the present time. The other great lesson taught by Balfour was +that of the balanced daily life: the morning lecture and tour of the +laboratory, the five quiet hours devoted to his own writing and +research, the vigorous afternoon exercise, and the delightful care-free +and shop-free evening. At the time Balfour was turning out the great +volumes of his “Comparative Embryology,” a monumental work, I asked him +how many hours a day he gave to writing; he replied: “Never more than +five hours.” A fresh mind is far more creative than a jaded mind. + +In the autumn of 1879 I moved to London, which was then in the full and +glorious tide of Victorian life. Not a member had fallen out of the +great ranks. I had the good fortune to hear in the scientific societies +some of these great men, such as Clark Maxwell in physics, to meet all +the leading biologists except Wallace, and especially to come under the +commanding personal influence of Huxley. Huxley especially imparted +philosophic breadth, grasp of the whole subject, the force and value of +expression, the wisdom and perception that come from survey of a very +broad field, from both the philosophic and the anatomical standpoint. +His sense of humor was delightful and brightened many of the most +difficult passages in his discourses. By his way of living and by the +unlimited personal sacrifices he made he taught me that we men of +science must do our part in public education. To public service Huxley +sacrificed his life, for not long after his great lecture course of +1879–1880, which I attended and of which I took the fullest notes, he +broke down in health. When I last met him in Cambridge, at the British +Association meeting of 1894, he shook his head sadly and said: “Osborn, +I no longer can keep up with the progress of biology.” Soon after his +death, in 1895, I wrote the reminiscences which appear in this volume +without change. + +To Huxley I owe the greatest biological impression that came to me in +England, namely, a few words with Charles Darwin in Huxley’s laboratory. +From the large number of students working there at the time, Huxley +singled me out, perhaps because I was the only American, perhaps because +of my early palæontological writing. I realized that I must make the +most of the opportunity, and for a few moments I gazed steadily into +Darwin’s face and especially into his benevolent blue eyes, which were +almost concealed below the overhanging brows, eyes that seemed to have a +vision of the entire living world and that gave one the impression of +translucent truthfulness. In my address at the Darwin Centenary at +Cambridge I endeavored to convey this profound impression of translucent +truthfulness. Darwin arrived at Evolution not because he desired to do +so, but because he was forced into it by his own observations of Nature. +He came of a long line of compellingly truthful ancestors, and certainly +“truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” is a distinctly +English and Scotch trait. In my fifty years’ experience with scientific +men I have found them neither more nor less truthful than other men, +because truthfulness does not go on all fours with genius, with powers +of observation and of generalization. Darwin always kept in the realm of +fact; he was equally sincere in the realm of opinion and of theory. If +in the relatively small part of his life that he devoted to speculation +and to theory his contributions are less permanent, it is because, after +all, Nature is unreasonable and irrational in her methods. + +On returning to America as a young comparative anatomist I was +privileged to work as a comrade with men with whom I had started as a +disciple. I became more intimate than ever with the Scotchman James +McCosh and enjoyed his eager freshness of mind and desire to gain new +ideas. For a gift on his eightieth birthday his students paraphrased the +lines of Aristophanes: “Honor to the old man who in the declining vigor +of years seeks to learn new subjects and to add to his wisdom.” I had +great reverence for another Scotchman, James Bryce, with his enthusiasm, +his broad learning and experience, his eager reception of new ideas, to +the very end of his life; finally, for that very unique Scotchman, John +Muir. From their simple and hardy mode of living the Scotch contribute +to the students of life enduring impressions of energy, vigor, +youthfulness, and of the most genial and whole-hearted friendship. + + +In reprinting these “Impressions,” extending over a very long period of +years, from my youthful tribute to Balfour in 1883 to those of John +Muir, John Burroughs, Theodore Roosevelt, and Howard Crosby Butler in +the present decade, may I claim that years of observation have given me +far deeper penetration into the sources of human character and +personality? This penetration is due to my studies in heredity and my +observations on the difference in races and racial characteristics, +which, for example, separate the Scotch from the English and both from +the Irish. Such penetration is carried as far as I am able to do at +present in appreciation of the peculiar genius of John Muir and of John +Burroughs. In contrasting these two friends I asked myself the question: +“Why are they so much alike and why so different?” I believe I have +partly answered this question, but we may go much farther in the +sympathetic biographic analysis of the future. Since I wrote the first +of my biographic studies, the principal titles of which are included in +the appendix of this volume, I have been attempting to penetrate into +human nature along a number of paths: first, along studies of heredity, +already alluded to; second, along studies of the men of the Old Stone +Age and their forebears; third, with the increasing conviction that our +intellectual, moral, and spiritual reactions are extremely ancient and +that they have been built up not in hundreds but in thousands—perhaps +hundreds of thousands—of years. It would, however, take me far beyond +the limits of a foreword to enter upon this deeper interpretation of the +impressions and influences which great minds of great men of different +kinds have exerted upon me. + +In these “Impressions” I am not in any case attempting to portray the +whole man, but only one principal aspect of each life. The nearest +approach to a full biographic treatment is the centenary address on the +life and works of Charles Darwin and the memorial address on his +comrade, Alfred Russel Wallace. It was an appreciation which I received +in a letter from Wallace, reproduced in facsimile at the beginning of +this volume, also letters from Mrs. Huxley and her son, from Lady Bryce, +and from friends of John Burroughs and John Muir that first led me to +believe that these biographical sketches would be helpful to young men +and young women who aspire to greatness along different lines of +intellectual endeavor. I have omitted many of my biographic essays +because I was not confident that they would be of interest to laymen as +well as to young scientists, to whom this work is addressed, but I +cannot pass by two of my great palæontological predecessors, Joseph +Leidy and Edward Drinker Cope, because the resemblances and contrasts +between these two men are especially illuminating in scientific life. + +Cope was certainly the most brilliant creative mind in comparative +anatomy and evolution that America has produced. Quaker by birth, he was +a fighter by nature, both in theory and in fact. On one occasion, in the +American Philosophical Society, a difference of opinion with his friend +Persifor Frazer led to such a violent controversy that the two +scientists retired to the hallway and came to blows! On the following +morning I happened to meet Cope and could not help remarking on a +blackened eye. “Osborn,” he said, “don’t look at my eye. If you think my +eye is black, you ought to see Frazer this morning!” But such +differences of opinion did not sever the lifelong friendship, and when +Cope died Frazer was the first to pay a glowing tribute to his genius. +Cope was not a single but a multiple personality; he presents the widest +possible contrast to a retiring nature like that of Alfred Russel +Wallace, a sketch of whom opens this volume. Wallace, the last survivor +of the great trio of British naturalists of the nineteenth century, +survived by only a few months another member of the group, Sir Joseph +Hooker, who introduced the famous Darwin-Wallace papers on Natural +Selection to the Linnæan Society in 1858. Lyell, Darwin, and Wallace +were three successive but closely kindred spirits, whose work began and +ended with what will be known as the second great epoch of evolutionary +thought, the first being that of the precursors of Darwin and the third +that in which we live. They established Evolution through a continued +line of attack by precisely similar methods of observation and reasoning +over an extremely broad field. + +As to the closeness of the intellectual sequence between these three +men, those who know the original edition of the second volume of Lyell’s +“The Principles of Geology,” published in 1832, must regard it as the +second biologic classic of the century—the first being Lamarck’s +“Philosophie Zoologique,” of 1809—on which Darwin through his higher and +much more creative vision built up his “Journal of Researches.” When +Lyell faltered in the application of his own principles Darwin went on +and was followed by Wallace. The two older men may be considered to have +united in guiding the mind of Wallace, because the young naturalist, +fourteen years the junior of Darwin, took both “The Principles” of Lyell +and “The Journal” of Darwin with him on his journey to South America, +during which his career fairly began. + +From his record of observations during his life in the tropics of +America and of Asia Wallace will be remembered not only as one of the +independent discoverers of the theory of Natural Selection but next to +Darwin as one of the great naturalists of the nineteenth century. His +range and originality are astounding in these days of specialization. +His main lines of thought, although in many instances suggested to his +mind somewhat suddenly, were developed and presented in a deliberate and +masterly way through the series of papers and books extending from 1850 +to 1913. The highest level of his creative life was, however, reached at +the age of thirty-five, when with Darwin he published his sketch of the +theory of Natural Selection. This outburst of original thought, on which +his reputation will chiefly rest, came as an almost automatic +generalization from his twelve years in the tropics. + + +The two most powerful men I have known intimately were J. Pierpont +Morgan and Theodore Roosevelt. I had the privilege of calling the former +“Uncle Pierpont” and have vivid recollections of him as he was in 1867, +when I was a boy, and in the last two brilliant decades of his life. +Theodore Roosevelt I knew slightly as a boy, as an intimate friend of my +naturalist brother, Frederick, and in the last two and great decades of +his life as my own friend. Although the man in the street would say that +no two Americans could be further apart than these two, in many +characteristics they were closely similar. The outstanding point of +likeness was their courage in facing obstacles, their dominance in +overcoming difficulties of all kinds. There was no “I can’t” in the +vocabulary of either man; rather “I can and I will.” Close contact with +both of these men enforced the life motto which became my own: _Whatever +is right can be done, and shall be done._ Powerful as both were in +leadership, they always sought the counsel of their friends and were apt +to be governed by it, unless it was the counsel of timidity or of +irresolution. Neither was dominant in the sense that Woodrow Wilson was +dominant and autistic—to use the professional phrase. Both won the +devoted friendship and admiration of hundreds of men and women, and both +made many enemies; through similar virtues Roosevelt became the opponent +of Morgan and Morgan became the opponent of Roosevelt. Both were +intensely patriotic and willing to make any sacrifice, however great, +for their country. Both were deeply religious and were guided by an +unfaltering faith in Divine Providence. The most surprising likeness I +observed was their humility; I never saw a trace of conceit in either +Pierpont Morgan or Theodore Roosevelt. The assurance and self-confidence +they both displayed in critical and commanding moments were part of the +great game of life. Leaders must have broad shoulders, firm necks, and +confident and determined faces when the world is full of doubting +Thomases, as it always is. A marked point of likeness was the power of +immediate, almost instantaneous, decision, which sometimes led both men +astray. Contrasting with their power of command were their simplicity, +their unselfish devotion to their friends, and their love of children +and fascination for children. Both had a deep interest in science; with +Morgan it was mathematics, minerals, and gems, and, in later years, +archæology. Natural history was the first and last love of Theodore +Roosevelt, in all its branches, and special study of birds and mammals +constituted the greatest pleasure of his life. + +It will surprise many of my readers that I have instituted such a +comparison, that I have found resemblances amidst the many violent +contrasts in the lives and characters of these two great Americans. It +was the love of nature and of human nature which made them alike. Few of +us are single in our personalities; most of us are dual, and the rare +men like Morgan and Roosevelt are multiple. Among great naturalists +Wallace, Darwin, and Pasteur were men of single natures, whose whole +lives were devoted to single great purposes, to the attainment of which +all other objects in life gave way. They were neither combatant nor +militant, nor did they ever seek to force their theories or opinions by +militant methods. They sought seclusion, avoided public meetings and +controversies, and were astonished by the world-wide acclaim of their +discoveries. It is told of Darwin that after meeting Gladstone he +expressed surprise that such a very great man had paid him so much +attention. It appears that this simplicity of life and avoidance of +renown are most favorable to that creative state of mind which most +frequently engenders renown. + +On the other hand, Huxley and Cope were, above all, combatants in the +new social and philosophical arena of Evolution. Huxley’s world-wide +fame rests partly on his defense of freedom of thought and of research +and on the brilliance of his rapier-like thrusts at some of the shams +and hypocrisies of the Special Creation exponents of his day. His genius +lay in polemics, in criticism, in exposition, rather than in creative +discovery and generalization; it is a striking fact that he did not add +a single new principle to the philosophy of Evolution. His life was one +of enforced activity and public service, which left him little or no +repose for creative thought, yet he added to anatomy a number of very +important generalizations. There is no measuring what Huxley might have +done if he had enjoyed the repose that was granted to Darwin. Cope was, +above all, a creative naturalist of a high order, with a rapidity and +originality of thought almost without parallel in the history of +anatomy; great generalizations affecting the order and arrangement of +the whole kingdom of backboned animals arose from his brain, while in +philosophical analysis he was a tyro where Huxley was a master. + + +From these impressions of the lives of many naturalists we see that the +naturalist is animated first of all by the joy of observation, without +initial hope or thought of discovery but surely in the end leading to +discovery; leading also to creative thought if observation is pursued +with a single eye and unfaltering purpose, regardless of all obstacles +or dangers and of the greatest impediment of all, namely, interest in +self and in self-advancement. + + + + + CONTENTS + + + PAGE + DEDICATION v + + AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FOREWORD vii + + IMPRESSIONS: + + ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 1 + “Alfred Russel Wallace, 1823–1913” + + CHARLES DARWIN 33 + “Life and Works of Darwin” + “The Darwin Centenary at Cambridge” + + THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 71 + “A Student’s Reminiscences of Huxley” + + FRANCIS MAITLAND BALFOUR 99 + + JAMES BRYCE 109 + + LOUIS PASTEUR 117 + “The New Order of Sainthood” + + JOSEPH LEIDY 131 + “Joseph Leidy, Founder of Vertebrate Palæontology in America” + + EDWARD DRINKER COPE 149 + “A Great Naturalist” + + THEODORE ROOSEVELT 165 + “Theodore Roosevelt, Naturalist” + + THE TWO JOHNS 183 + “The Racial Soul of John Burroughs” + “John Muir” + + HOWARD CROSBY BUTLER 207 + “Howard Crosby Butler, Explorer” + + BIOGRAPHIES BY THE AUTHOR 213 + + + + + ACKNOWLEDGMENT + + +“The Life and Works of Darwin” was an address delivered at Columbia +University on February 12, 1909, the hundredth anniversary of Darwin’s +birth, as the first of a series of nine lectures on Charles Darwin and +his influence on science. “The Darwin Centenary” is based on an address +in reply to the reception of delegates at Cambridge. “A Student’s +Reminiscences of Huxley” was a lecture delivered at the Marine +Biological Laboratory of Wood’s Hole in the summer session of 1895. The +address on James Bryce was delivered at the memorial service to Viscount +Bryce at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, March 5, 1922. The +address on Joseph Leidy was originally delivered at the Joseph Leidy +Centenary, Philadelphia, December 6, 1923, and was later published in +Science. The article on Howard Crosby Butler was an address delivered at +the Graduate College of Princeton University, October 31, 1922. This +address was afterward published in the Butler memorial volume by the +Princeton University Press. The chapter on John Burroughs is an address +which was delivered at the John Burroughs memorial meeting, American +Academy of Arts and Letters, on November 18, 1921. + +Other chapters of this book are based on articles published in the +following magazines: _Popular Science Monthly_, _Science_, _The +Century_, _The Sierra Club Bulletin_. + +[Illustration: + + ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE +] + + + + + ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE + 1823–1913 + + I never had the pleasure of meeting Wallace, but I felt rewarded for + the time I devoted to the study of his works and the influences which + shaped his great career in preparing this Impression by his letter of + acknowledgment, which is reproduced in facsimile. Wallace was a great + man, although he was overshadowed by a much greater man, Darwin. The + scientific relations of these two men were ideal; their magnanimity + toward each other in the crisis of independent discovery of the great + principle of Natural Selection is one of the noblest episodes in the + history of biology. + + + ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE + +Nature and nurture conspire to form a naturalist. Predisposition, an +opportune period, and a happy series of events favored Alfred Russel +Wallace. + +Wallace was the son of Thomas Vere Wallace, of Hanworth, Middlesex, +England, and Mary Anne Grennell, of Hertford. His ancestry is obscure. +On the paternal side he is probably descended from one of the branches +of Sir William Wallace, the popular national hero of Scotland, but +nothing is known back of his grandfather, who was probably keeper of the +inn on the estates of the Duke of St. Albans, of Hanworth. The burial +records of Hanworth mention an Admiral James Wallace. In his mother’s +family on the paternal side is the name Greenell, of Hertford, probably +the “Greenaile” in 1579, French Huguenot refugees after the massacre of +St. Bartholomew. Her grandfather was for many years alderman and twice +mayor of Hertford. One of the Greenells was an architect. + +Wallace’s father took up the profession of the law, but did not +continue, and up to his marriage lived the life of a fairly well-to-do +middle-class gentleman. After his marriage he essayed the publishing of +two magazines apparently devoted to art, antiquities and general +literature, which were failures. He then moved from Marylebone to more +rural districts where living was less expensive, first to St. Georges, +Southwark, and then to Usk, Monmouthshire. In this village Alfred Russel +Wallace was born on January 8, 1823. + +When Wallace was about six years of age the family moved to Hertford, +where his education was begun in the old grammar school that dated back +to 1617. He left school too young to begin Greek, but he studied Latin, +and next to Latin grammar the most painful subject he learned was +geography, principally because of the meaningless way in which it was +taught. During the last year of study at the grammar school, as the +family were then in very straitened circumstances, he assisted in the +teaching of the younger boys in reading, arithmetic, and writing. + +Wallace considered that his home life in Hertford was in many ways more +educational than the time spent at school. His father was a man who +enjoyed the pleasure of literature and belonged to a book club through +which a constant stream of interesting books came to the house, from +which he read aloud to the family in the evenings. The father earned a +small income tutoring and as librarian of a small library, and the son +Alfred spent hours reading there, also. + +At the age of thirteen young Wallace left school, with a view to +learning land surveying. He stayed in London a short time with his +brother John, who was apprenticed to a master builder, and their +evenings were most frequently spent in the “Hall of Science,” a kind of +mechanics institute for advanced thinkers among workmen. Here he heard +many lectures by Robert Owen, the founder of the socialist movement in +England, and took up philosophical reading, beginning with Paine’s “Age +of Reason,” among other books. In the summer of 1837 he went with his +brother William into Bedfordshire to begin his education as a land +surveyor, and practised for seven years in various parts of England and +Wales. + +After a time it was decided that he should try to pursue the +clock-making business as well as surveying and general engineering, and +Wallace considered that this was the first of several turning-points in +his life, because changes in the business of the clock-making concern +with which he was connected at Leighton prevented his continuing this +work for more than a short period. He was delighted to take up again in +1839 the employment of land surveying because of the opportunities it +afforded for out-of-door life. + +While at Neath, in Wales, there was not much demand for surveying, and +Wallace occupied himself in constructing a rude telescope with which he +was able to observe the moon and Jupiter’s satellites, and he developed +much interest in studying astronomy and in the development of +astronomical instruments. But he says that he was chiefly occupied with +what became more and more the solace and delight of his lonely rambles +among the moors and mountains, namely, his first introduction to the +variety, the beauty and the mystery of nature as manifested in the +vegetable kingdom. + +His earnings were very meagre and he had little money for the purchase +of books. During the seven years he worked with his brother he says he +“hardly ever had more than a few shillings for personal expenses.” It +was during this period, while most occupied out of doors with the +observation and collection of plants, that he began to write down more +or less systematically his ideas on various subjects that interested +him. His first literary efforts all bear dates of the autumn and winter +of 1843, when he was between twenty and twenty-one years of age. One of +his first productions was the rough sketch of a popular lecture on +botany addressed to an audience supposed to be as ignorant as he was +when he began his observation of the native flowers. A second of these +early lectures was on the subject “The Advantages of Varied Knowledge,” +which he considered of interest chiefly as showing the bent of his mind +at the time and indicating a disposition for discursive reading and +study. He also wrote at this time on the manners and customs of the +Welsh peasantry in Brecknockshire and Glamorganshire, and put the matter +in form for one of the London magazines, but it was declined. + +These early and serious studies in botany, continuing for four years, +prepared him for the plant wonders of the tropics. At the age of +twenty-one he went to London. He afterward regarded his difficulty in +obtaining employment as a great turning-point in his career, “for +otherwise,” he writes, “it seems very unlikely that I should ever have +undertaken what at that time seemed rather a wild scheme, a journey to +the almost unknown forests of the Amazon in order to observe nature and +make a living by collecting.” + +In his autobiographic volumes of 1905, “My Life, a Record of Events and +Opinions,” there is also an interesting sketch of his state of mind at +this time. + + I do not think that at this formative period I could be said to have + shown special superiority in any of the higher mental faculties, but I + possessed a strong desire to know the causes of things, a great love + of beauty in form and color, and a considerable, but not excessive + desire for order and arrangement in whatever I had to do. If I had one + distinct mental faculty more prominent than another it was the power + of correct reasoning from a review of the known facts in any case to + the causes or laws which produced them, and also in detecting + fallacies in the reasoning of other persons. + +Elsewhere in his autobiography he observes that whatever reputation in +science, literature and thought he may possess is the result of the +organs of comparison, causality and order, with firmness, +acquisitiveness, concentrativeness, constructiveness and wonder, all +above the average, but none of them excessively developed, combined with +a moderate faculty of language which + + enables me to express my ideas and conclusions in writing though but + imperfectly in speech. I feel, myself, how curiously and persistently + these faculties have acted in various combinations to determine my + tastes, disposition and actions. + +Wallace shared Darwin’s strong sentiment for justice as between man and +man, and abhorrence of tyranny and unnecessary interference with the +liberty of others. His retiring disposition enabled him to enjoy long +periods of reflection, receptiveness and solitude, both at home and in +the tropics, out of which have come the sudden illuminations or flashes +of light leading to the solution of the problems before him. As to this +wonderful mechanism of induction, Wallace observes: + + I have long since come to see that no one deserves either praise or + blame for the _ideas_ that come to him, but only for the _actions_ + resulting therefrom. Ideas and beliefs are certainly not voluntary + acts. They come to us—we hardly know _how_ or _whence_, and once they + have got possession of us we can not reject or change them at will. + +Apart from Darwin’s education in Christ’s College, Cambridge, as +compared with Wallace’s self-education, the parallel between his +intellectual tendencies and environment and those of Charles Darwin is +extraordinary. They enjoyed a similar current of influence from men, +from books and from nature. Thus the next turning-point in his life was +his meeting with Henry Walter Bates, through whom he acquired his zest +for the wonders of insect life, which opened for the first time for him +the zoological windows of nature. In a measure Bates was to Wallace what +the Reverend John S. Henslow had been to Darwin. It is noteworthy that +the greater and most original part of his direct observations of nature +was upon the adaptations of insects. + +Darwin and Wallace fell under the spell of the same books, first and +foremost those of Lyell, as noted above, then of Humboldt in his +“Personal Narrative” (1814–18), of Robert Chambers in his “Vestiges of +the Natural History of Creation” (1844), of Malthus in his “Essay on the +Principle of Population” (1798). + +It was, however, Darwin’s own “Journal of Researches,” published in +1845, and read by Wallace at the age of twenty-three, which determined +him to invite Bates to accompany him on his journey to the Amazon and +Rio Negro, which filled the four years 1848–52. In this wondrous +equatorial expanse, like Darwin he was profoundly impressed with the +forests, the butterflies and birds, and with his first meeting with man +in an absolute state of nature. Bates, himself a naturalist of high +order,[2] was closely observing the mimetic resemblances among insects +to animate and inanimate objects and introducing Wallace to a field +which he subsequently made his own. Bates remained several years after +Wallace’s departure and published his classical memoir on mimicry in +1860–61. Wallace’s own description of his South American experiences, +entitled “Narrative of Travels on the Amazon,” published in 1853 when he +was thirty years of age, does not display the ability of his later +writings and shows that his powers were slowly developing. + +His eight years of travel between 1854 and 1862 in the Indo-Malay +Islands, the Timor Group, Celebes, the Moluccas and the Papuan Group +brought his powers to full maturity. It is apparent that his prolonged +observations on the natives, the forests, the birds and mammals, and +especially on the butterflies and beetles, were gradually storing his +mind for one of those discharges of generalization which come so +unexpectedly out of the vast accumulation of facts. “The Malay +Archipelago” of 1869, published seven years after the return, is +Wallace’s “journal of researches,” that is, it is to be compared with +Darwin’s great work of this title. Its fine breadth of treatment in +anthropology, zoology, botany and physiography gives it a rank second +only to Darwin’s “Journal” in a class of works repeatedly enriched by +British naturalists from the time of Burchell’s journey in Africa. + +Wallace’s first trial at the evolution problem was his essay sent to the +_Annals and Magazine of Natural History_ in 1855, entitled “On the Law +Which Has Regulated the Introduction of New Species.” This paper +suggested the _when_ and _where_ of the occurrence of new forms, but not +the _how_. He concludes: + + It has now been shown, though most briefly and imperfectly, how the + law that “_Every species has come into existence coincident both in + time and space with a preexisting closely allied species_,” connects + together and renders intelligible a vast number of independent and + hitherto unexplained facts. + +In February, 1858, during a period of intermittent fever at Ternate, the +_how_ arose in his mind with the recollection of the “Essay” of Malthus, +and there flashed upon him all the possible effects of the struggle for +existence. Twenty years before the same idea, under similar +circumstances, had come into the mind of Darwin. The parallel is +extraordinary as shown in the following citations: + + DARWIN WALLACE + In October, 1838, that is, fifteen In February, 1858, I was suffering + months after I had begun my from a rather severe attack of + systematic inquiry, I happened to intermittent fever at Ternate, in + read for amusement, “Malthus on the Moluccas; and one day, while + Population,” and being well lying on my bed during the cold + prepared to appreciate the struggle fit, wrapped in blankets, though + for existence which everywhere goes the thermometer was at 88° Fahr., + on from long-continued observations the problem again presented itself + of the habits of animals and to me, and something led me to + plants, it at once struck me that think of the “positive checks” + under these circumstances favorable described by Malthus in his “Essay + variations would tend to be on Population,” a work I had read + preserved, and unfavorable ones to several years before, and which had + be destroyed. _The result of this made a deep and permanent + would be the formation of new impression on my mind. These + species._ Here, then, I had at last checks—war, disease, famine and the + got a theory by which to work; but like—must, it occurred to me, act + I was so anxious to avoid prejudice on animals as well as man. Then I + that I determined not for some time thought of the enormously rapid + to write even the briefest sketch multiplication of animals, causing + of it. In June, 1842, I first these checks to be much more + allowed myself the satisfaction of effective in them than in the case + writing a very brief abstract of my of man; and while pondering vaguely + theory in pencil, in thirty-five on this fact there suddenly flashed + pages, and this was enlarged during upon me the _idea_ of the survival + the summer of 1844 into one of 230 of the fittest—that the individuals + pages.—Darwin’s “Autobiography,” removed by these checks must be on + Chap. II. the whole inferior to those that + survived. In the two hours that + elapsed before my ague fit was + over, I had thought out almost the + whole of the theory; and the same + evening I sketched the draft of my + paper, and in the two succeeding + evenings wrote it out in full, and + sent it by the next post to Mr. + Darwin.—Wallace’s “My Life,” p. + 212. + +Darwin had been working upon the verification of the same idea for +twenty years. We owe to Sir Joseph Hooker and to Lyell the bringing +together of these independent but strikingly similar manuscripts. The +noble episode which followed of the joint publication of the discovery +was prophetic of the continued care for truth and carelessness of self, +of the friendship, mutual admiration and co-operation between these two +high-minded men, which affords a golden example for our own and future +ages. Each loved his own creations, yet undervalued his own work; each +accorded enthusiastic praise to the work of the other. + +It is a striking circumstance in the history of biology that Wallace’s +rapidly produced sketch of 1858 “On the Tendencies of Varieties to Part +Indefinitely from the Original Type” not only pursues a line of thought +parallel to that of Darwin, except in excluding the analogy of natural +with human selection, but embodies the permanent substance of the +selection theory as it is today after fifty-four years of world-wide +research. It may be regarded as his masterpiece. The attempt has been +made by De Vries and others to show that Wallace in his “Darwinism” of +1889 differed from Darwin on important points, but whatever may be true +of this final modification of the theory, a very careful comparison of +the Darwin-Wallace sketches of 1858 shows that they both involve the +principle of discontinuity; in fact, fluctuation in the sense of plus +and minus variation was not recognized at the time; the notion of +variation was that derived directly from field rather than from +laboratory notes. This is repeatedly implied in Wallace’s language and +especially in his sketch of 1858: + + ... there is a general principle in nature which will cause many + _varieties_ to survive the parent species, and to give rise to + successive variations departing further and further from the original + type, and which also produces, in domesticated animals, the tendency + of varieties to return to the parent form.... + + Most or perhaps all the variations from the typical form of a species + must have some definite effect, however slight, on the habits or + capacities of the individuals. Even a change of color might, by + rendering them more or less distinguishable, affect their safety; a + greater or less development of hair might modify their habits.... The + superior variety would then alone remain, and on a return to favorable + circumstances would rapidly increase in numbers and occupy the place + of the extinct species and variety. + + The _variety_ would now have replaced the _species_, of which it would + be a more perfectly developed and more highly organized form.... Here, + then, we have _progression and continued divergence_ deduced from the + general laws which regulate the existence of animals in a state of + nature, and from the undisputed fact that varieties do frequently + occur.... Variations in unimportant parts might also occur, having no + perceptible effect on the life-preserving powers; and the varieties so + furnished might run a course parallel with the parent species, either + giving rise to further variations or returning to the former type.... + In the wild animal, on the contrary, all its faculties and powers + being brought into full action for the necessities of existence, any + increase becomes immediately available, is strengthened by exercise, + and must even slightly modify the food, the habits and the whole + economy of the race. It creates, as it were, a new animal, one of + superior powers, and which will necessarily increase in numbers and + outlive those inferior to it.... + + We see, then, that no inferences as to varieties in a state of nature + can be deduced from the observation of those occurring among domestic + animals.... Domestic animals are abnormal, irregular, artificial; they + are subject to varieties which never occur and never can occur in a + state of nature; their very existence depends altogether on human + care.... An origin such as is here advocated will also agree with the + peculiar character of the modifications of form and structure which + obtain in organized beings—the many lines of divergence from a central + type, the increasing efficiency and power of a particular organ + through a succession of allied species, and the remarkable persistence + of unimportant parts, such as color, texture of plumage and hair, form + of horns or crests, through a series of species differing considerably + in more essential characters.... This progression, by minute steps, in + various directions, but always checked and balanced by the necessary + conditions, subject to which alone existence can be preserved, may, it + is believed, be followed out so as to agree with all the phenomena.... + +It is true that Wallace subsequently modified his theory, adopted the +selection of plus and minus fluctuations, and became a determined +opponent of the mutation hypothesis of De Vries. + +The distinctive features of the later development of the theory in +Wallace’s mind were his more implicit faith in selection, his insistence +on utility or selection value of new or varying characters, his flat +rejection of Lamarckism, his reliance on spontaneous variations as +supplying all the materials for selection. This confidence appears in +the following passages from his militant reply in the volume of 1889 to +the critics of Darwinism: + + The right or favorable variations are so frequently present that the + unerring power of natural selection never wants materials to work + upon.... Weismann’s theory ... adds greatly to the importance of + natural selection as the one invariable and ever-present factor in all + organic change and that which can alone have produced the temporary + fixity combined with the secular modification of species. + +The principle of discontinuity is less clearly brought out than in the +first sketch of 1858; the selection of fluctuation is favorably +considered. The laws and causes of variation are, however, assumed +rather than taken up as a subject of inquiry. These opinions of 1889 +were the summation of twenty-nine years of work. + +To return to the life-narrative, the autumn of 1860 found Wallace in the +Moluccas reading the “Origin of Species” through five or six times, each +time with increasing admiration. A letter of September 1 to his friend +George Silk contains the key to the subsequent direction of his +research, namely, his recognition of the vast breadth of Darwin’s +principles and his determination to devote his life to their exposition: + + I could _never have approached_ the completeness of his book, its vast + accumulation of evidence, its overwhelming argument, and its admirable + tone and spirit. I really feel thankful that it has _not_ been left to + me to give the theory to the world. Mr. Darwin has created a new + science and a new philosophy; and I believe that never has such a + complete illustration of a new branch of human knowledge been due to + the labors and researches of a single man. Never have such vast masses + of widely scattered and hitherto quite unconnected facts been combined + into a system and brought to bear upon the establishment of such a + grand and new and simple philosophy. + +The discovery of “Natural Selection” again turned the course of +Wallace’s life. In his autobiography he writes: + + I had, in fact, been bitten with the passion for species and their + description, and if neither Darwin nor myself had hit upon “natural + selection,” I might have spent the best years of my life in this + comparatively profitless work, but the new ideas swept all this + away.... This outline of the paper will perhaps enable my readers to + understand the intense interest I felt in working out all these + strange phenomena, and showing how they could almost all be explained + by that law of “Natural Selection” which Darwin had discovered many + years before, and which I also had been so fortunate as to hit upon. + +The coloring of animals as observed in the tropics and the Malayan +Islands was the subject in which Wallace made his most extensive and +original contributions to Darwinism. In his sketch of 1858 he wrote: + + Even the peculiar colors of many animals, especially insects, so + closely resembling the soil or the leaves or the trunks on which they + habitually reside, are explained on the same principle; for though in + the course of ages varieties of many tints may have occurred, _yet + those races having colors best adapted to concealment from their + enemies would inevitably survive the longest_. + +Returning from the Archipelago in 1862, he published in 1864 his pioneer +paper, “The Malayan Papilionidæ or Swallow-tailed Butterflies, as +illustrative of the Theory of Natural Selection,” in which he at once +took rank beside Bates and Müller as one of the great contributors to +the color characteristics of animals. We see him step by step developing +the ideas of protective resemblance which he had fully discussed with +Bates, of alluring and warning colors, and of mimicry, pointing out the +prevalence of mimicry in the female rather than in the male. The whole +series of phenomena is believed to depend upon the great principle of +the utility of every character, upon the need of color protection by +almost all animals, and upon the known fact that no characteristic is so +variable as color, that, therefore, concealment is most easily obtained +by color modification. Protective resemblance in all its manifold forms +has ever been dominant in his mind as a greater principle than that of +the sexual selection of color which Darwin favored. + +Here may be cited Wallace’s own account of his famous observation of +mimicry in the leaf butterfly from his volume of 1869, “The Malay +Archipelago”: + + The other species to which I have to direct attention is the _Kallima + paralekta_, a butterfly of the same family group as our Purple + Emperor, and of about the same size or larger. Its upper surface is of + a rich purple, variously tinged with ash color, and across the fore + wings there is a broad bar of deep orange, so that when on the wing it + is very conspicuous. This species was not uncommon in dry woods and + thickets, and I often endeavored to capture it without success, for + after flying a short distance it would enter a bush among dry or dead + leaves, and however carefully I crept up to the spot I could never + discover it till it would suddenly start out again and then disappear + in a similar place. At length I was fortunate enough to see the exact + spot where the butterfly settled, and though I lost sight of it for + some time, I at length discovered that it was close before my eyes, + but that in its position of repose it so closely resembled a dead leaf + attached to a twig as almost certainly to deceive the eye even when + gazing full upon it. I captured several specimens on the wing, and was + able fully to understand the way in which this wonderful resemblance + is produced.... All these varied details combine to produce a disguise + that is so complete and marvellous as to astonish every one who + observes it; and the habits of the insects are such as to utilize all + these peculiarities, and render them available in such a manner as to + remove all doubt of the purpose of this singular case of mimicry, + which is undoubtedly a protection to the insect. + +In 1867, in a manner which delighted Darwin, Wallace advanced his +provisional solution of the cause of the gay and even gaudy colors of +caterpillars as warnings of distastefulness. In 1868 he propounded his +explanation of the colors of nesting birds, that when both sexes are +conspicuously colored, the nest conceals the sitting bird, but when the +male is conspicuously colored and the nest is open to view, the female +is plainly colored and inconspicuous. His theory of recognition colors +as of importance in enabling the young birds and mammals to find their +parents was set forth in 1878, and he came to regard it as of very great +importance. + +In “Tropical Nature” (1878) the whole subject of the colors of animals +in relation to natural and sexual selection is reviewed, and the general +principle is brought out that the exquisite beauty and variety of insect +colors has not been developed through their own visual perceptions, but +mainly and perhaps exclusively through those of the higher animals which +prey upon them. This conception of color origin, rather than that of the +general influence of solar light and heat or the special action of any +form of environment, leads him to his functional and biological +classification of the colors of living organisms into five groups, which +forms the foundation of the modern, more extensive and critical +classification of Poulton. He concluded (p. 172): + + We find, then, that neither the general influence of solar light and + heat, nor the special action of variously tinted rays, are adequate + causes for the wonderful variety, intensity and complexity of the + colors that everywhere meet us in the animal and vegetable worlds. Let + us, therefore, take a wider view of these colors, grouping them into + classes determined by what we know of their actual uses or special + relations to the habits of their possessors. This, which may be termed + the functional and biological classification of the colors of living + organisms, seems to be best expressed by a division into five groups, + as follows: + + Animals.│1. Protective colors. + „ │2. Warning colors. │_a._ Of creatures specially protected. + „ │ „ │_b._ Of defenseless creatures mimicking + │ │ _a_. + „ │3. Sexual colors. + „ │4. Typical colors. + ────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── + Plants. │5. Attractive colors. + +Twelve years later he devoted four chapters of his “Darwinism” to the +colors of animals and plants, still maintaining the hypotheses of +utility, of spontaneous variation and of selection. + +The study of geographic distribution of animals also sprang from the +inspiration of the Malayan journey and from the suggestiveness of the +eleventh and twelfth chapters of “The Origin of Species,” which Wallace +determined to work out in an exhaustive manner. Following the +preliminary treatises of Buffon, of Cuvier and Forbes, and the early +regional classification of Sclater, Wallace takes rank as the founder of +the science of zoogeography in his two great works, “The Geographical +Distribution of Animals” of 1876, and “Island Life” of 1881, the latter +volume following the first as the result of four years of additional +thought and research. His early observations on insular distribution +were sketched out in his article of 1860, “The Zoological Geography of +the Malayan Archipelago.” + +Here is his discovery of the Bali-Lombok boundary line between the +Indian and the Australian zoological regions which has since been +generally known by his name. + +In these fundamental geologic and geographic works Wallace appears as a +disciple of Lyell in uniformitarianism, and a follower of Dana as +regards the stability and permanence of continental and oceanic areas, +for which doctrine he advances much original evidence. He taxes his +ingenuity to discover every possible means of dispersal of animals and +plants other than those which would be afforded by hypothetical land +connections; he considers every possible cause of extinction other than +those which are sudden or cataclysmal. + +The “Island Life” is in itself a great contribution to zoology and +zoogeography, the starting-point of all modern discussion of insular +faunas and floras. His conservative theory of dispersal is applied in an +original way to explain the arctic element in the mountain regions of +the tropics, as opposed to the low-temperature theory of tropical +lowlands during the Glacial Period; his explanation is founded on known +facts as to the dispersal and distribution of plants and does not +require the extreme changes in the climate of tropical lowlands during +the Glacial Period on which Darwin founded his interpretation. The +causes and influence of the Glacial Epoch are discussed in an exposition +of Croll’s theory. In this connection may be mentioned one of Wallace’s +original geological contributions, in the article “Glacial Erosions of +Lake Basins,” published in 1893, namely, his theory of glacial erosion +as a means of explaining the origin of valley lakes of glaciated +countries. + +The original trend of Wallace’s thought as to the ascent of man is first +shown in the three anthropological essays of 1864, 1869 and 1870, which +were subsequently collected in the volume “Contributions to the Theory +of Natural Selection.” This work, published in 1871, includes all his +original essays from 1855 to 1869 on selection, on color and human +evolution, which foreshadow the later development of his speculative +philosophy. + +A suggestive anthropological contribution is the article entitled “The +Expressiveness of Speech or Mouth Gesture as a Factor in the Origin of +Language,” in which is developed the theory of the origin of language in +connection with the motions of the lips, jaws and tongue. With Wallace +also arose the now widely accepted belief that the Australian aborigines +constitute a low and perhaps primitive type of the Caucasian race. + +In the article of 1864, “The Development of Human Races under the Law of +Natural Selection,” Wallace first advanced the hypothesis which has +since proved to be untenable, that so soon as man learned to use fire +and make tools, to grow food, to domesticate animals, to use clothing +and build houses, the action of natural selection was diverted from his +body to his mind, and thenceforth his physical form remained stable, +while his mental faculties improved. His subsequent papers on human +evolution, “The Limits of Natural Selection as Applied to Man” of 1869, +“On Instinct in Man and Animals” of 1871, mark the gradual divergence of +his views from those of Darwin, for in his opinion natural selection is +believed to be inadequate to account for several of the physical as well +as psychical characteristics of man, for example his soft, sensitive +skin, his speech, his color sense, his mathematical, musical and moral +attributes. He concluded: + + The inference I would draw from this class of phenomena is that a + superior intelligence has guided the development of man in a definite + direction, and for a special purpose, just as man guides the + development of many animal and vegetable forms. + +It is also prophetic of his later indictments of the so-called +civilization of our times that we find at the end of the closing pages +of “The Malay Archipelago” the first statement of the feeling which so +many travelers have experienced from a comparison of the natural and +so-called civilized condition of man that “social evolution from +barbarism to civilization” has not advanced general human welfare. These +humanitarian and partly socialistic ideas are developed in a series of +recurrent essays between 1882 and 1903, including “The Nationalization +of Land” and “Studies Scientific and Social.” + +He returned to this subject in what we believe to be his last published +essay, namely, his “Social Environment and Moral Progress” of 1913, +wherein he considers the so-called “feministic” movement and future of +woman: + + The foregoing statement of the effect of established natural laws, if + allowed free play under rational conditions of civilization, clearly + indicates that the position of woman in the not distant future will be + far higher and more important than any which has been claimed for or + by her in the past. + + While she will be conceded full political and social rights on an + equality with men, she will be placed in a position of responsibility + and power which will render her his superior, since the future moral + progress of the race will so largely depend upon her free choice in + marriage. As time goes on, and she acquires more and more economic + independence, _that_ alone will give her an effective choice which she + has never had before. But this choice will be further strengthened by + the fact that, with ever-increasing approach to equality of + opportunity for every child born in our country, that terrible excess + of male deaths, in boyhood and early manhood especially due to various + preventable causes, will disappear, and change the present majority of + women to a majority of men. This will lead to a greater rivalry for + wives, and will give to women the power of rejecting all the lower + types of character among their suitors. + + It will be their special duty so to mould public opinion, through home + training and social influence, as to render the women of the future + the regenerators of the entire human race. + +In closing this review of a great life, we cannot refrain from +reflecting on the pendulum of scientific opinion. The discovery of a +great truth such as the law of selection is always followed by an +over-valuation, from which there is certain to be a reaction. We are in +the midst of such a reaction at the present time, in which the +Darwin-Wallace theory of natural selection is less appreciated than it +will be in the future when there comes a fresh readjustment of +scientific values. + +It is well to remember that we may not estimate either the man of +science or his conclusions as of our own period, but must project +ourselves in imagination into the beginnings of his thought and into the +travails of his mind, considering how much larger he was than the men +about him, how far he was an innovator, breaking away from the +traditions of his times, how far his direct observations apart from +theory are true and permanent, and how far his theories have contributed +to the great stream of biological thought. + +Our perspective has covered a long, honorable span of sixty-five years +into the beginnings of the thinking life of a natural philosopher whose +last volume, “The World of Life,” of the year 1911, gives as clear a +portrayal of his final opinions as that which his first essay of 1858 +portrays of his early opinions. + +We follow the cycle of his reflection beginning with “adaptation” as the +great mystery to be solved; in the middle and sanguine period of life, +“adaptation” is regarded as fully explained by natural selection; in the +closing and conservative period of life “adaptation” is again regarded +in some of its phases as entirely beyond human powers of interpretation, +not only in the evolution of the mental and spiritual nature of man, but +in such marvellous manifestations as the scales of butterflies or the +wings of birds. + +From our own intellectual experience we may sympathize with the rebound +of maturity from the buoyant confidence of the young man of thirty-five +who finds in natural selection the entire solution of the problem of +fitness which has vexed the mind and aroused the scientific curiosity of +man since the time of Empedocles. We have ourselves experienced a loss +of confidence with advancing years, an increasing humility in the face +of transformations which become more and more mysterious the more we +study them, although we may not join with this master in his appeal to +an organizing and directing supernatural principle. Younger men than +Wallace, both among the zoologists and philosophers of our own time, are +giving a somewhat similar metaphysical solution of the eternal problem +of adaptation, which still baffles and transcends our powers of +experiment and of reasoning. + +[Illustration: + + _Photographed by his son, Leonard Darwin_ + + CHARLES DARWIN +] + + + + + CHARLES DARWIN + 1809–1882 + + I met Darwin in Huxley’s laboratory and my impression of his + personality is described in the address on the Life and Works of + Darwin, which was delivered at Columbia University on the hundredth + anniversary of his birth, as an introduction to a series of nine + lectures on Charles Darwin and his influence in science. The fact that + Lincoln and Darwin were born on the same day, February 12, 1809, + brought together these two great men, so widely different in their + vocations, so similar in their reverence for the truth, in their + simplicity and directness of life. + + The address at the Darwin Centenary at Cambridge was delivered at the + request of my American colleagues, in reply to the reception of the + delegates. It was strictly limited as to time, presenting the problem + of speaking of Darwin to the men who knew him personally, who recalled + almost every detail of his life—to sum up in comparatively few words + the outstanding facts of his influence. The form of this address is + therefore quite in contrast to the preceding tribute, which was + without time limitation. + + + LIFE AND WORKS OF DARWIN + + + I + +Columbia University is celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the +birth of Darwin, the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the +“Origin of Species.” In the year 1809 many illustrious men[3] were born, +among them Darwin and Lincoln, one hundred years ago today, February 12. +So widely different in their lives, Darwin and Lincoln were yet alike in +simplicity of character and of language, in love of truth, in abhorrence +of slavery, and especially in unconsciousness of their power. Both were +at a loss to understand their influence over other men. “I am nothing +and truth is everything,” once wrote Lincoln. In concluding his +autobiography Darwin wrote: + + With such moderate abilities as I possess, it is truly surprising that + I should have influenced to a considerable extent the belief of + scientific men on some important points. My success as a man of + science has been determined as far as I can judge, by complex and + diversified mental qualities and conditions. Of these, the most + important have been the love of science, unbounded patience in long + reflecting over any subject, industry in observing and collecting + facts, a fair share of invention as well as of common sense. + +Lincoln’s greatest single act was his death-blow to slavery. Man had +been fighting for centuries for freedom, in labor, in government, in +religion, and in mind. It is certainly notable that the final victory +for bodily liberty was won during the very years which witnessed the +final emancipation of the mind. I do not see that Darwin’s supreme +service to his fellow men was his demonstration of evolution—man could +have lived on quite as happily and perhaps more morally under the old +notion that he was specially made in the image of his Maker. Darwin’s +supreme service was that he won for man absolute freedom in the study of +the laws of nature; he literally fulfilled the saying of St. John, “Ye +shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” + +When we look back upon the very recent years of 1858–59, the years of +revolution, we see that we were far from free either to study nature or +reason about it. Our intellectual chains were from the forges of +theology both catholic and protestant. The Bible was read as a +revelation of physical law rather than as an epic of righteousness and +spiritual law. Theology while in power was itself in a most critical +position, in a _cul-de-sac_ of antagonism to reason and common sense, +and this despite the warnings of Augustine and of Bacon. As early as the +fifth century the wise theologian of Numidia had said: + + Leave questions of the earth and the sky and the other elements of + this world to reasoning and observation. Perceiving that you are as + far from the truth as the east from the west the man of science will + scarce restrain his laughter. + +Similarly, the great founder of the inductive method observed: + + Do not excite the laughter of men of science through an absurd mixture + of matters human and divine. Do not commit the consummate folly of + building a system of natural philosophy on the first chapter of + Genesis or on the Book of Job. + +It is difficult for the college student in this day of liberty, if not +of license, to realize that, in the words of Lowell: + + We breathe cheaply in the common air thoughts that great hearts once + broke for. + +When, in 1844, Darwin communicated to the botanist Hooker under promise +of secrecy his outline of evolution, he well knew the opprobrium it +would bring, for he subsequently added (1846): + + When my notes are published I shall fall infinitely low in the opinion + of all _sound_ naturalists, so this is my prospect for the future. + +From the borders of Poland in 1543, or just three centuries earlier, +Copernicus had published his “Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies” and +thus fired the first shot in a three hundred years’ war for freedom to +observe nature. In 1611 the telescope of Galileo demonstrated the truth +of the Copernican law that the earth moves around the sun; and the most +impressive object today in Florence is the model of the finger of this +great astronomer as he held it up before the examiners of the +Inquisition, with the words, “It still moves.” + +As time advanced the prison gave way to the milder but effective weapons +of ostracism and loss of position. In biology Linnæus, Buffon, Lamarck, +St. Hilaire, in turn discovered the evidences of evolution, but felt the +penalty and either recanted or suffered loss of position. The cause of +supernaturalism had never seemed stronger than in 1857; the masterly +works of Paley and Whewell had appeared; the great series of Bridgewater +Treatises to demonstrate the wisdom and goodness of God in the special +creation of adaptations had just been closed; men of rare ability, +Cuvier, Owen, Lyell and Agassiz, were on the side of special creation; +yet at the very time this whole system of natural philosophy was rotten +at the foundation because it was not the work of free observation. + +Where his great predecessors Buffon and Lamarck had failed, Darwin won +through his unparalleled genius as an observer and reasoner, through the +absolutely irresistible force of the facts he had assembled and through +the simplicity of his presentation. Lacking the literary graces of his +grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, and the obscurity of Spencer, Darwin was +understood by every one as every one could understand Lincoln. It is +true the cause was immediately championed by able men, but victory was +gained not by the vehement and radical Haeckel nor yet by the masterly +fighter Huxley, but through the resistless power of the truth as Darwin +saw it and presented it. It was not a denial, as had been the great +sceptical movement of the end of the eighteenth century, but an +affirmation. Darwin was not destroying but building; yet at the time +good and honest men trembled as if passing through an earthquake, for in +the whole history of human thought there had been no such cataclysm. + + + II + +In what he achieved Darwin is so entirely alone that his place in the +history of ideas is next to Aristotle, the great Greek biologist and +philosopher who preceded him by over two thousand years. + +The biographers of Lincoln are at a loss to explain his greatness +through heredity. Darwin belonged to an able family, and his ancestors +are singularly prophetic of his career. He was near of kin to Francis +Galton, who shares with Weismann the leadership in the study of heredity +during the nineteenth century. By a happy combination of all the best +traits of the best of his ancestors coupled with the no less happy +omission of other traits, Darwin was a far greater man than any of his +forebears. Kindliness, truthfulness and love of nature were part of his +birthright. From his grandfather Erasmus, Charles may have inherited +especially his vividness of imagination and his strong tendency to +generalize. Countless hypotheses flitted through his mind. “Without +speculation there is no good and original observation,” he wrote to +Wallace. Still more interesting is the fact that the inheritance of his +grandfather’s tendency toward speculation took the direction of +evolution, for before the close of the eighteenth century Erasmus Darwin +gave the world in poetical form his belief in a complete evolutionary +system as well as the first clear exposition of what is now known as the +Lamarckian hypothesis. But in the grandson hypotheses were constantly +held in check by the determination to put each to the severe test of +observation. Darwin speaks of his father, Robert, as the most acute +observer he ever saw, and attributes to him his intense desire to +understand the reasons of things; from him came caution and +conservatism. He says in his “Autobiography”: + + I have steadily endeavored 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. + +If the “poet is born not made,” the man of science is surely both born +and made. Rare as was Darwin’s genius, it was not more rare than the +wonderful succession of outward events which shaped his life. It is true +that Darwin believed with his cousin Francis Galton that education and +environment produce only a small effect upon the mind of any one, but +Darwin underestimated the force of his educational advantages just as he +underestimated his own powers, and this because he thought only of his +book and classroom life at school, at Edinburgh and at Cambridge, and +not of his broader life. It was true in 1817, as today, that few +teachers teach and few educators educate. It is true that those were the +dull days of classical and mathematical drill. Yet look at the roster of +Cambridge and see the men it produced. From Darwin’s regular college +work he may have gained but little, yet he was all the while enjoying an +exceptional training. Step by step he was made a strong man by a mental +guidance which is without parallel, by the precepts and example of his +father, for whom he held the greatest reverence, by his reading of the +poetry of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Milton, and the +scientific prose of Paley, Herschel and Humboldt, by the subtle +scholarly influences of old Cambridge, by the scientific inspiration and +advice of Henslow, by the masterful inductive influence of the geologist +Lyell, and by the great nature panorama of the voyage of the _Beagle_. + +The college mates of Darwin saw more truly than he himself what the old +university was doing for him. Professor Poulton of Oxford believes that +the kind of life which so favored Darwin’s mind has largely disappeared +in English universities, especially under the sharp system of +competitive examinations; yet this is still more truly the atmosphere of +old Cambridge today than of any of our American colleges. It would be an +interesting subject to debate whether we could nurture such a man; +whether a Darwin, were he entered at a Columbia, a Harvard, a Princeton, +could develop mentally as Charles Darwin did at Cambridge in 1828. I +believe that conditions for the favorable nurture of such a mind are not +with us. They are repose, time for continuous thought, respect for the +man of brains and of individuality and of such peculiar tastes as Darwin +displayed in his avidity for collecting beetles, freedom from mental +convention, general sympathy for nature, and, above all, ardor in the +world of ideas. If the genial mind cannot find the kindred mind it +cannot develop. Many American school and college men are laughed out of +the finest promptings of their natures. In short, I believe our +intellectual environment would be distinctly against a young Darwin +today. + +Thus event after event in Darwin’s life was singularly propitious. None +but a Darwin would have reflected these events as he did, but grand and +rare they certainly were. + +At the age of nineteen he entered Christ’s of Cambridge, the small +college which two hundred years before had sheltered John Milton, the +great poet of “Paradise Lost,” the epic of the special creation theory +which it was Darwin’s destiny to destroy. His passion for sport, +shooting, hunting, cross-country riding, his genial enjoyment of friends +of his own age, did not prevent delightful excursions with older men. He +was known as “the man who walks with Henslow”; and close personal +intercourse with this learned and genial botanist (Reverend Wm. C. +Henslow) affected him more than any other feature of his college life. +After graduation this personal association extended through Henslow to +the geologist Sedgwick, who prepared him for the next step in his +career. It was Henslow who secured for him his place on the exploring +ship _Beagle_ and the voyage round the world (1831–1836), by far the +most important experience in his life. + +No graduate course in any university can compare for a moment with the +glorious vision which passed before young Darwin on the _Beagle_, but +here again fortune smiled upon him, for this vision required the very +scientific spirit and point of view which came to him through the +reading of the “Principles of Geology” of Lyell, the masterly teacher of +the uniformitarian doctrine of Hutton. That nature worked slowly in past +as in present time and that the interpretation of the past is through +observation of the present gave the note of Darwin’s larger and more +original interpretation, because the slow evolution which Lyell piously +restricted to geology and the surface of the earth Darwin extended to +biology and all living beings. If during the voyage Lyell’s arguments +convinced Darwin of the permanence of species, Lyell’s way of looking at +nature also gave him the means of seeing that species are not permanent. +In his own words, he “saw through Lyell’s eyes,” and with the admiration +of others always so characteristic of him his tribute to Lyell is +without reserve. The second edition of “The Journal” is dedicated: + + With grateful pleasure as an acknowledgment that the chief part of + whatever scientific merit this Journal and the other works of the + author may possess has been derived from studying the well-known and + admirable “Principles of Geology.” + +The five years of the voyage filled the twenty-second to twenty-seventh +years of Darwin’s life, the period now ordinarily given to professional +studies. In reading the simple but fascinating “Journal,” which stands +quite by itself in literature, we see how Darwin through his own genius +and through the methods successively impressed upon him by his father, +by Henslow, by Sedgwick and by Lyell was unconsciously preparing his +mind for the “Origin of Species” and the “Descent of Man,” the two most +influential books of science which have ever appeared. From the islands +of the Atlantic and the Pacific we follow his delightful comments on +animals and plants of all kinds on sea and land, through forests, pampas +and steppes, up the dry slopes of the Andes, along the salt lakes and +deserts of Chili and of Australia. The dense forests of Brazil, pendant +with orchids and gay with butterflies, contrast with those of Terra del +Fuego and of Tahiti, and with the deforested Cape de Verde Islands. On +these islands, the first he visits, he is enormously impressed by the +superiority of Lyell’s method. He visits other islands of all kinds, +inhabited and uninhabited, the non-volcanic St. Paul’s rocks, +half-submerged volcanic cones, coral reefs and islands of the south +Pacific. He observes live glaciers, as well as the contrasting action of +active and of dead volcanoes. Along the rivers of Patagonia he unearths +great extinct or fossil mammals; in Peru he studies the extinct races of +man; the aborigines of Terra del Fuego and of Patagonia make the most +profound impression upon his mind. In brief, he sees the great drama of +nature in all its lesser scenes and in all its grander acts. He begins +the voyage a firm believer in the fixity of species, but doubts begin to +enter his mind when in the sands of the pampas of South America he +perceives that the extinct forms are partly ancestral to the living, and +when on the isolated Galapagos Islands he finds the life is not that of +a special creation but that detached from the continent of South America +six hundred miles distant. + +Darwin says: + + I owe to the voyage the first real training and education of my mind. + That my mind had developed is rendered probable by my father’s first + exclamation on my return, “why the shape of his head is quite + altered.” + + + III + +Soon after Darwin’s return he moved to London for the two most active +years of his life, to care for his collections and to write up his +observations. At this moment came the third of the great turning-points +in his life, which as a mysteriously disguised blessing was brought +about through ill health. In London he was entering official duties and +public scientific service which would undoubtedly have increased and +interfered more and more seriously with his work. We can only count it +as one of the most fortunate circumstances in the history of science +that Darwin at the age of thirty-three was forced to leave London and to +move to Down. Here for forty years he never knew for one day the health +of an ordinary man; his life was one long struggle against the strain of +sickness. But unrealized by him there was the compensation of a mind +undisturbed by the constant interruption of outside affairs, such +interruption as killed Huxley and is killing so many fine and ambitious +men today. When I saw Huxley and Darwin side by side in 1879, the one +only fifty-four, the other seventy, the younger man looked by far the +more careworn of the two. Huxley, the strong man, broke down mentally at +fifty-six; Darwin, the invalid, was vigorous mentally at seventy-two. + +Darwin’s writings fall into three grand series. In the nine years after +he returned from the voyage, or between his twenty-seventh and +thirty-sixth years, Darwin wrote the first series, including his +pre-evolutionary geological and zoological works, his “Coral Reefs” +(1842), his “Zoology and Geology of the Voyage of the _Beagle_” +(1844–1846), his “Journal of Researches,” the popular narrative of his +voyage (1845). Darwin’s ill health thereafter shut him off from geology, +although his last volume, “The Earthworm,” was in a sense geological. + +It is characteristic of the life of every great man that his genius and +his own self-analysis instinctively guide him to discover his mental +needs. + +Until the age of forty-five Darwin in his own opinion had not completed +his education, in the sense that education is a broad and exact +training. He now proceeded to fill the one gap in his training by +devoting the eight years of his life between thirty-seven and forty-five +to a most laborious research upon the barnacles, or Cirripedia. This +gave him the key to the principles of the natural or adaptively +branching and divergent arrangement of animals through the laws of +descent as set forth in the “Origin,” which he certainly could not have +secured in any other way. The value he placed on his work on the +barnacles is of especial import today when systematic work is so lightly +esteemed by many biologists, young and old. Darwin subsequently, in the +words of Hooker, “recognized three stages in his career as a biologist, +the mere collector at Cambridge, the collector and observer on the +_Beagle_ and for some years afterwards, and the trained naturalist +after, and only after, the Cirripede work.” + +Long before this, however, at the age of twenty-eight, Darwin had begun +his career as a Darwinian. In July, 1837, he began his notes on the +transmutation of species, based on purely Baconian principles, on the +rigid collection of facts which would bear in any way on the variations +of animals and plants under domestication and in nature. Rare as was his +reasoning power, his powers of observation were of a still more distinct +order. He persistently and doggedly followed every clew; he noticed +little things which escaped others; he always noted exceptions and at +once jotted down facts opposed to his theories. On the voyage the +marvellous adaptations of animals and plants had been his greatest +puzzle. Fifteen months later, in October, 1838, in reading the work of +Malthus, on “Population,” there flashed across his mind the threefold +clew of the struggle for existence, of constant variability, and of the +selection of variations which happen to be adaptive. + +The three memorable features of Darwin’s greatest work, “The Origin of +Species,” are, that he was twenty-one years in preparing it, that, +although by 1844 he was a strongly convinced evolutionist and natural +selectionist, he kept on with his observations for fifteen years, and +the volume even then would have been still longer postponed but for a +wonderful coincidence, which constitutes the third and not the least +memorable feature. This coincidence was that Wallace had also become an +evolutionist and had also discovered the principle of natural selection +through the reading of the same essay of Malthus. It is further +remarkable that of all persons Wallace selected Darwin as the one to +whom to send his paper. It was then through the persuasion of the great +botanist Hooker, who had known Darwin’s views for thirteen years, that +these independent discoveries were published jointly on July 1, 1858. +All the finest points of Darwin’s personal character were displayed at +this time; in fact, the entire Darwin-Wallace history up to and +including Wallace’s noble and self-depreciatory tribute to Darwin on +July 1 of last summer, is one of the brightest chapters in the history +of science. Wallace himself pointed out the very important distinction +that while the theories contained in the two papers published fifty +years ago were nearly identical, Wallace had deliberated only three days +after coming across the passage in Malthus, while Darwin had deliberated +for fifteen years. He modestly declared that the respective credit +should be in the ratio of fifteen years to three days. + +Several months past the age of fifty Darwin published his epoch-making +work (November, 1859), and despite ill health, between fifty and +seventy-three he produced the nine great volumes which expand and +illustrate the views expressed in “The Origin of Species.” + +A parallel to this remarkable late productiveness is that of Kant, who +also put forth his greatest work after fifty. Let those past the five +decades take heart, for it appears that while there are inborn +differences between men in this regard, imagination, observation, +reasoning and production do not necessarily dim with age. Darwin’s mind +remained young and plastic to the end; his latest and one of his most +characteristic works, “The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the +Action of Earth Worms,” was published at the age of seventy-two, after +forty-four years of observation. It contained another and perhaps the +most extreme demonstration of Lyell’s principle that vast changes in +nature are brought about by the slow operation of infinitesimal causes. + +Three of Darwin’s succeeding volumes are a filling out of the “Origin.” +“The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication” (two volumes, +1868) presents the entire fabric of the notes begun twenty-one years +before on the transmutation of species. “The Descent of Man” (1871) was +another logical outcome of the “Origin,” yet it was only faintly +adumbrated by a single allusion in that work to the fact that the +transmutation of species necessarily led to the evolution of man. The +“Descent” marks the third of the great dates in the history of thought, +as the “Origin” marks the second, because it is the final step in the +development of ideas which began with Copernicus in 1543. The world-wide +sensation, the mighty _storm_ produced by this bold climax of Darwin’s +work, is so fresh in the memory of all that a mere allusion suffices. +The evolutionary or genetic basis for modern psychology as stated in +“The Descent of Man” was given still more concrete form in Darwin’s +succeeding and most delightful volume, “The Expression of the Emotions” +(1872). + +The knowledge of zoology and anatomy displayed in these four +evolutionary volumes came from direct observation, vast and systematic +reading and note-taking from the simple materials which Darwin could +collect at Down. Always penetrating as these observations are, they are +still, in my opinion, surpassed in beauty and ingenuity by his +marvellous work on plants, published between 1862 and 1880. Here the +principles of co-adaptation of plants and insects in cross- and +self-fertilization, in climbing plants and insectivorous plants, in +forms of flowers, in movements of plants, are all brought forth in +support of the theory of natural selection and the operation of unknown +laws. Darwin’s most precise observations and some of his most brilliant +discoveries recorded in these volumes laid the foundations of modern +experimental botany. + +Of his method Darwin writes: + + From my early youth I had the strongest desire to understand or + explain whatever I observed, that is, to group facts under some + general laws. My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for + grinding general laws out of large collections of facts. + +The only work which Darwin wrote deductively was his “Coral Reefs.” +Every other volume came through the inductive-deductive process, that +is, through an early assemblage of facts followed by a series of trial +hypotheses, each of which was rigidly tested by additional facts. The +most central of these trial hypotheses was that of the building up of +adaptations through the selection of the single adaptive variation out +of the many fortuitous variations, and this Darwin was unable to rigidly +test by facts but was obliged to leave for verification or disproof by +work after him. + + + IV + +On December 8, 1879, when Darwin was in his seventieth year and I in my +twenty-second, I had the rare privilege of meeting him and looking +steadily in his face during a few moments’ conversation. It was in +Huxley’s laboratory, and I was at the time working upon the anatomy of +the Crustacea. The entry in my journal is as follows: + + This is a red letter day for me. As I was leaning over my lobster + (_Homarus vulgaris_) this morning, cutting away at the brain, I raised + my head and looked up to see Huxley and Darwin passing by me. I + believe I never shall see two such great naturalists together again. I + went on apparently with skill, really hacking my brain away, and cast + an occasional glance at the great old gray-haired man. I was startled, + so unexpected was it, by Huxley speaking to me and introducing me to + Darwin as “an American who has already done some good palæontological + work on the other side of the water.” I gave Darwin’s hand a + tremendous squeeze (for I never shall shake it again) and said, + without intending, in an almost reverential tone, “I am very glad to + meet you.” He stands much taller than Huxley, has a very ruddy face, + with benevolent blue eyes and overhanging eyebrows. His beard is quite + long and perfectly white and his hair falls partly over a low + forehead. His features are not good. My general impression of his face + is very pleasant. He smiled broadly, said something about a hope that + Marsh with his students would not be hindered in his work, and Huxley, + saying “I must not let you talk too much,” hurried him on into the + next room. + +I may add, as distinctly recorded in my memory, that the impression of +Darwin’s bluish-gray eyes, deep-set under the overhanging brows, was +that they were the eyes of a man who could survey all nature. + +Another memory of interest is that the instant Huxley closed the door I +was mobbed as the “lucky American” by the ninety less fortunate students +of Great Britain and other countries. + +Huxley’s solicitude for Darwin’s strength was characteristic of him. He +often alluded to himself as “Darwin’s bull dog.” + +I have already stated that of the two men Darwin gave the impression of +enjoying the better health. Huxley was then sixteen years the younger, +yet the burdens and strain of London life made him look less young and +hale. In this connection an earlier jotting from the same laboratory is +as follows: + + Huxley comes in as the clock strikes and begins to lecture at once, + almost before it ceases. He looks old and somewhat broken, his eyes + deeply sunken, but is a lecturer as strong as he ever could have been. + His language is very simple too. + + + V + +Darwin passed away in the year 1882, at the age of seventy-three. Out of +the simple and quiet life at Down he had sent forth the great upheaval +and revolution. + +On this centenary when we are honoring Darwin, many may ask, exactly +what is Darwinism? Failure to know leads some to doubt, others to +predict a decline, especially where “the wish is father to the thought.” +Nothing could be less true than to say that there is the least abatement +in the force of the main teaching of this great leader, namely, of the +evolutionary law of the universe. The vitality of this idea is shown by +its invasion of the physical world. Again, Darwinism is the sum of +Darwin’s observations on earth structure, on plants, animals and man. +This vast body of truth and of interpretation still so far surpasses +that brought forward by any other observer of nature, and these facts +and interpretations are so far confirmed that they have become the very +foundation-stones of modern biology and geology. Finally, looking at +Darwinism as the sum of his generalizations as to the processes of +evolution we again find a vast body of well-established laws which are +also daily becoming more evident. As to the laws of evolution, there is +no single biological principle more absolutely proved by the study of +living and extinct things since Darwin’s time than the broad law of +natural selection: certainly the fittest survive and reproduce their +kind, the fittest of every degree, all classes, orders, genera, species, +individuals and even the fittest organs and fittest separate parts of +organs. Darwin still gives us the only explanation which has ever been +suggested of hundreds of thousands of adaptations of which neither +Buffon’s view of direct effect of environment nor Lamarck’s view of the +inheritance of bodily modifications even approaches an explanation +worthy to be considered. Take the egg of the murre or guillemot, which +is so much larger at one end than the other that it cannot roll off the +cliff on which it is laid, or the seasonal changes of color in the +ptarmigan, every one of which is protective. + +There is some lack of perspective, some egotism, much one-sidedness in +modern criticism. The very announcement, “Darwin deposed,” attracts such +attention as would the notice “Mt. Blanc removed”; does it not bespeak +courage to attack a lion even when deceased? Preoccupation in the study +of one great law, as in the case of Bateson on Mendelism and De Vries on +Mutation, blinds to every other law. To be dispassionate, let us +remember that Darwin’s hypothesis was framed in 1838, seventy-one years +ago. Are the two great Cambridge men, Newton and Darwin, lesser men +because astronomy and biology are progressive sciences? Secondly, to +know your Darwin you must not judge him by single passages but by all he +wrote. Darwin is not to be known through the extremes of those of his +followers with whom an hypothesis has become a creed. Reading him afresh +and through and through we discover that his “variation” and +“variability” are very broad and elastic terms. Every actual example he +cites of his main hypothesis, such as the speed of the wolf or the deer, +or the long neck of the giraffe, is a variation both heritable and of +adaptive value. + +When we put together all the concrete cases which he gave to illustrate +his views of selection we see that he includes both continuous and +discontinuous variations, both the shades of difference of kind and +proportion and the little leaps or saltations from character to +character. For example, certain cases of immunity to disease are now +known to be “unit characters” in Bateson’s sense, or “mutants” in the De +Vries sense. Darwin repeatedly referred to immunity as a variation which +would be preserved by selection. Moreover, Darwin’s own repeated +assertion of his profound ignorance of the laws of variation certainly +pointed the way to the investigation of these laws, and it is this very +study which is modifying the applications of his selection hypothesis. + +From first to last Huxley maintained that it would require many years of +study before naturalists could say whether Darwin had been led to +overestimate the power of natural selection. Darwin’s mind from first to +last was also open on this point. Through every edition of the “Origin” +we find the passage: + + The laws governing the incipient or primordial variations (unimportant + except as the groundwork for selection to act on and then all + important) I shall discuss under several heads. But I can come, as you + may well believe, to only very partial and imperfect conclusions. + +In 1869 and in the latest edition of the “Origin” Darwin speaks of +“individual differences” as of paramount importance, but he illustrates +these differences by such instances as the selection of passenger +pigeons with more powerful wings, or the selection of the lightest +colored birds in deserts. + +There can be no question, however, that Darwin did love his selection +theory and somewhat overestimated its importance. His conception of +selection in nature may be compared to a series of concentric circles +constantly narrowing from the largest groups down to the minutest +structures. In the operations of this intimate circle of minute +variations within organisms he was inclined to believe two things: +first, that the fit or adaptive always arises out of the accidental, or +that out of large and minute variations _without direction_ selection +brings direction and fitness; second, as a consistent pupil of Lyell, he +was inclined to believe that the chief changes in evolution are slow and +continuous. + +The psychology of Darwin was in a reaction state from the prevailing +false teleology; he was not expecting that purposive or teleological or +even orthogenetic laws of variation would be discovered. William James +has thus recently expressed and endorsed the spirit of Darwinism as a +new natural philosophy in the following words: + + It is strange, considering how unanimously our ancestors felt the + force of this argument [that is, the teleological], to see how little + it counts for since the triumph of the Darwinian theory. Darwin opened + our minds to the power of the chance-happenings to bring forth “fit” + results if only they have time to add themselves together. He showed + the enormous waste of nature in producing results that get destroyed + because of their unfitness. + +The question before us naturalists today is whether this +non-teleological spirit of Darwinism as expressed by William James +corresponds with the actual order of evolution in nature. This really +involves the deep-seated query whether the intimate or minute parts of +living things are operating under natural laws like non-living things or +are really lawless. + +Before expressing my individual opinion based on my own researches of +the last twenty years I may summarize the general modern dissent: in +_three points_ it may be said that Darwin’s teachings are not accepted +today. + +First, his slowly developed belief in the inheritance of bodily +modifications and the provisional “assemblage theory” of heredity which +he called _pangenesis_ has been set aside for Weismann’s law that +heredity lies in the continuity of a specific heredity plasm, and for +want of evidence of the transmission of acquired characters. + +Second, while his prevailing belief that changes in organisms are in the +main slow and continuous is now positively demonstrated to be correct by +the study of descent in fossil organisms, there is also positive +evidence for the belief which he less strongly entertained that many +changes are discontinuous or mutative, as held by Bateson and De Vries. + +Finally, his belief that out of fortuitous or undirected variations in +minute characters arise direction, purpose and adaptation through +selection still lacks proof by either observation or experiment. Fossil +and other descent series entirely unknown in Darwin’s time prove beyond +question that law rather than chance is prevailing in variation. + +What the nature of these laws is it is still too early to say. +Personally I am strongly of the opinion that the laws of life, like the +ultimate laws of physics, may eventually prove to be beyond analysis. + +To allow myself just one flight of fanciful statement drawn from +personal observation and reflection I may say there is a likeness +between the unit forces working in a single organism, both as revealed +by the microscope and in fossil series, and the individual soldiers +composing a giant army. The millions of well-ordered activities in the +body correspond with the millions of intelligently trained men who +compose the army; the selection process or the survival of the fittest +is like the competition between two armies, between the Russian and +Japanese, for example. It is an outward and visible competition between +two internally prepared and well-ordered hosts of units and groups of +units. Selection is continuously working upon the army as a whole and +also upon every unit which affects survival—an immunity unit, an +intelligence unit, a speed unit, a color or group of color units; just +as in the army it is working upon units of courage, of strategy, of +precision of fire, of endurance, of mass. In this sense it is perfectly +true to say with Darwin “that selection works upon certain single +variations.” It is not true, or at least it is not shown, that these +variations are a matter of chance; they rather appear to be a matter of +law, as indeed Darwin foresaw when he stated that he used the word +“chance” merely as a synonym of “ignorance.” + +In the present state of biology we are studying the behavior of the +thousands of parts, sometimes of blending, sometimes of separate, +sometimes of paired or triplicate units, which compose the whole and +make up the individual organism. Natural selection determines which +organism shall win; more than this, it determines which serviceable +activities of each organism shall win. Here lie the limits of its power. +Selection is not a creative but a judicial principle. It is one of +Darwin’s many triumphs that he positively demonstrated that this +judicial principle is one of the great factors of evolution. Then he +clearly set our task before us in pointing out that the _unknown_ lies +in the laws of variation, and a stupendous task it is. At the same time +he left us a legacy in his inductive and experimental methods by which +we may blaze our trail. + +Therefore, in this anniversary year, we do not see any decline in the +force of Darwinism but rather a renewed stimulus to progressive search. +As Huxley says: + + But this one thing is perfectly certain—that is, it is only by + pursuing his method, by that wonderful single-mindedness, devotion to + truth, readiness to sacrifice all things for the advance of definite + knowledge, that we can hope to come any nearer than we are at present + to the truths which he struggled to attain. + + + THE DARWIN CENTENARY AT CAMBRIDGE + +Crossing the Atlantic in honor of Darwin and rejoicing in the privilege +of uniting in this celebration of his birth, we desire, first of all, to +render our tribute to the University of Cambridge.... + +What can we add to the chorus of appreciation of the great pupil of +Christ’s which has come from college, press and pulpit since the opening +of this anniversary year? Only a few words of _personal impression_. + +To us, Darwin, more perhaps than any other naturalist, seems greatest in +the union of a high order of genius with rare simplicity and +transparency of thought. Dwelling on this lucid quality and on the vast +range of his observation from the most minute to the grandest relations +in nature, does not the image arise of a perfected optical instrument in +which all personal equation, aberration and refraction are eliminated +and through which, as it were, we gaze with a new vision into the +marvellous forms and processes of the living world? With this wondrous +lens our countrymen, Cope and Marsh, penetrated far deeper into fossil +life than their predecessor Joseph Leidy, and the arid deserts of the +Rocky Mountain region gave up their petrified dead as proofs of +Darwinism. Through its new powers Hyatt, Morse, Packard and Brooks saw +far more than their master Louis Agassiz and drew fresh testimonies of +development from the historic waters of New England. From the very end +of the new world, where the youthful Darwin received his first +impressions of the mutability of the forms of life, we enjoy a clearer +vision of the ancient life of Patagonia. + +What of Darwin’s future influence? + +While it is doubtful if human speculation about life can ever again be +so tangential as in our pre-Darwinian past of fifty years ago, it is +probable, in fact it is daily becoming more evident, that the destiny of +speculation is less the tangent than the maze—the maze of innumerable +lesser principles, with as many prophets calling to us to seek this +turning or that. There are those who in loyal advocacy of his system +feel that we shall not get much nearer to life than Darwin did, but this +is to abandon his progressive leadership, for if ever a master defined +the unknown and pointed the way of investigation, certainly it was +Darwin. In the wonderful round of addresses in his honor of this +Centennial Year and in the renewed critical study of his life and +writings, the recognition that Darwin opened the way has come to many +with the force of a fresh discovery. It is true that he left a system +and that he loved it as his own, but his forceful, self-unsparing and +suggestive criticism show that if he were living in these days of +Waagen, of Weismann, of Mendel and of De Vries, he would be in the front +line of inquiry, armed with matchless assemblage of fact, with +experiment and verification, and not least with incomparable candor and +good will. This bequest of a noble method is hardly less precious than +the immortal content of the “Origin of Species” itself. + +[Illustration: + + _From a photograph copyright by Elliott and Fry_ + + THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY +] + + + + + THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY + 1825–1895 + + To the memory of Balfour and of Huxley, my chief teacher in + comparative anatomy, I dedicated my work, “The Age of Mammals.” Huxley + set forth the logic of Darwin as applied to palæontology. Only a few + men of the last century had the gift of speaking in clear language + both to the learned and unlearned, and the greatest of these was + Huxley. To write both for the man of one’s own profession and for the + layman, to be accurate and abreast of the specialist who knows a + subject as well as or better than you do, while intelligible to the + non-specialist—there is the difficulty. Many times have I thought how + simple it would be to address either audience separately. Yet I + consider it fortunate that both are with us, because I share Huxley’s + confidence in addressing those who are willing to do a little serious + thinking in order to enjoy the vast vistas of interesting truth which + come as the reward of effort. I share also his conviction that it is + the duty of the man of science to devote a certain part of his time, + however absorbed in research he may be, to an honest attempt to + scatter scientific truth. + + During the winter of 1879–80 I attended Huxley’s full course of + lectures on Comparative Anatomy and Evolution, which were delivered in + the upper floor of the Royal College of Science. In “A Student’s + Reminiscences of Huxley” I especially attempt to describe personal + impressions which he made upon me as a lecturer and as a thinker and + to record some of the flashes of wit with which he enlivened his + lectures. Although intensely occupied at the time with a variety of + public education matters and with the pressure of literary and + scientific work, Huxley found time, chiefly in his home, to enter into + conversation on the subjects flooding his mind. It was there that I + heard some of the best stories here recorded. + + + A STUDENT’S REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY + +By far the larger number of American students who go abroad pass through +the English Channel, obtain a distant view of the mother country and, +after from one to three years in Germany, return with an exclusively +German education. Neither England nor France having been visited, the +implication is that the countries which produced Owen, Darwin, Huxley +and Balfour, or Lamarck, Cuvier, St. Hilaire and Pasteur have nothing to +offer the American student. This is not the fact; the fact is that +England and France are a half-century behind Germany in that kind of +university organization which attracts a foreign student and enables him +immediately to find his level and enter upon his research. English and +French universities until a very recent date either have been not so +fully prepared or have met the newcomer with practically insuperable +obstacles in the matter of a degree. + +None the less, the student who has not breasted these obstacles for the +compensating advantages which the English and French schools offer has +made a serious mistake. He has brought back not an Old World education, +but an exclusively German education, with its splendidly sound and +unique features and with many inherent defects. Germany produces the +generals and the rank and file of the armies of science, but certainly +the commanders-in-chief, in biology at least, have been Englishmen. If +we find the highest exponents of purely inductive research in Germany, +we certainly find a better union of the inductive and deductive methods +in France and England. France leads in expression and style of thought, +although, upon the whole, less sound in substance than Germany. England +and France in her best period have given us the most far-reaching and +permanent generalizations in biology. It follows that the American +student who can afford the experience will profit most by placing +himself successively in the scientific atmosphere of Germany, France, +and England. My own post-graduate education was unfortunately not of +this three-sided type. None the less, it has always seemed a most +fortunate circumstance that in the spring of 1879 a letter from the +venerable Kitchen Parker led me to Cambridge and to the great privilege +of sitting under Balfour, the most brilliant and lovable of men. In the +following autumn Huxley’s lectures upon Comparative Zoology began in +October, and by entering this course I came to know personally this +great master and through him to enjoy the rare opportunity of meeting +Charles Darwin. After this experience, which was equally open to any +serious student of biology at that time, it is natural that I should +strongly advise those of you who are planning your foreign studies to +spend part of your time in England and endeavor to discern some of the +distinctive qualities of English men of science which Huxley so nobly +illustrated. You will pardon the personal element in the following +recollections of Huxley as a teacher and the rather informal review of +his life-work. + +Huxley as a teacher can never be forgotten by any of his students. He +entered his lecture-room promptly as the clock was striking nine, rather +quickly and with his head bent forward “as if oppressive with its mind.” +He usually glanced attention to his class of about ninety and began +speaking before he reached his chair. He spoke between his lips, with +perfectly clear analysis, with thorough interest, and with philosophic +insight which was far above the average of his students. He used very +few charts, but handled the chalk with great skill, sketching out the +anatomy of an animal as if it were a transparent object. As in Darwin’s +face, and as in Erasmus Darwin’s, Buffon’s, and many other anatomists +with a strong sense of form, his eyes were heavily overhung by a +projecting forehead and eyebrows and seemed at times to look inward. His +lips were firm and closely set, with the expression of positiveness, and +the other feature which most marked him was the very heavy mass of hair +falling over his forehead, which he would frequently stroke or toss +back. Occasionally he would lighten up the monotony of anatomical +description by a bit of humor. I remember one instance which was +probably reminiscent of his famous tilt with Bishop Wilberforce at the +meeting of the British Association in 1860. Huxley was describing the +mammalian heart and had just distinguished between the tricuspid valve, +on the right side of the heart, and the bicuspid valve, on the left, +which you know resembles a bishop’s mitre, and hence is known as the +mitral valve. He said: + + It is not easy to recall on which side these respective valves are + found, but I recommend this rule: you can easily remember that the + mitral is on the left, because a bishop is never known to be on the + right. + +Huxley was the father of modern laboratory instruction, but in 1879 he +was so intensely engrossed with his own researches that he very seldom +came through the laboratory, which was ably directed by T. Jeffrey +Parker, assisted by G. B. Howes and W. Newton Parker, all of whom are +now professors, Howes having succeeded to Huxley’s chair. Each visit +therefore inspired a certain amount of terror, which was really +unwarranted, for Huxley always spoke in the kindest tones to his +students, although sometimes he could not resist making fun at their +expense. There was an Irish student who sat in front of me, whose +anatomical drawings in water-color were certainly most remarkable +productions. Huxley, in turning over his drawing-book, paused at a large +blur under which was carefully inscribed “sheep’s liver” and smilingly +said: “I am glad to know that is a liver; it reminds me as much of +Cologne Cathedral in a fog as of anything I have ever seen before.” +Fortunately the nationality of the student enabled him to fully +appreciate the humor. + +The greatest event in the winter of 1879 was Darwin’s first and only +visit to the laboratory. They came in together, Huxley leading slowly +down the long, narrow room, pointing out the especial methods of +teaching, which he had originated and which are now universally adopted +in England and in this country. Darwin was instantly recognized by the +class as he entered and sent a thrill of curiosity down the room, for no +one present had ever seen him before. There was the widest possible +contrast in the two faces. Darwin’s grayish-white hair and bushy +eyebrows overshadowed a pair of deeply set blue eyes, which seemed to +image his wonderfully calm and deep vision of nature and at the same +time to emit benevolence. Huxley’s piercing black eyes and determined +and resolute face were full of admiration and, at the same time, +protection of his older friend. He said afterward: “You know, I have to +take care of him; in fact, I have always been Darwin’s bulldog,” and +this exactly expressed one of the many relations which existed so long +between the two men. + +Huxley was not always fortunate in the intellectual caliber of the men +to whom he lectured in the Royal College of Science. Many of the younger +generation were studying in the universities, under Balfour at Cambridge +and under Rolleston at Oxford. However, Saville Kent, C. Lloyd Morgan, +George B. Howes, T. Jeffrey Parker and W. Newton Parker are +representative biologists who were directly trained by Huxley. Many +others, not his students, have expressed the deepest indebtedness to +him. Among these especially are Professor E. Ray Lankester, of Oxford, +and Professor Michael Foster, of Cambridge. Huxley once said that he had +“discovered Foster.” He not only singled men out, but knew how to direct +and inspire them to investigate the most pressing problems of the day. +As it was, his thirty-one years of lectures would have produced a far +greater effect if they had been delivered from an Oxford, Cambridge or +Edinburgh chair. In fact, Huxley’s whole life would have been different, +in some ways more effective, in others less so, if the universities had +welcomed the young genius who was looking for a post and even cast his +eyes toward America in 1850, but in those early days of classical +prestige both seats of learning were dead to the science which it was +Huxley’s great service in support of Darwin to place beside physics in +the lead of all others in England. Moreover, Oxford, if not Cambridge, +could not long have sheltered such a wolf in the fold. + +Huxley’s public addresses always gave the impression of being largely +impromptu, but he once told me: “I always think out carefully every word +I am going to say. There is no greater danger than the so-called +_inspiration of the moment_, which leads you to say something which is +not exactly true or which you would regret afterward. I sometimes envy +your countrymen their readiness and believe that a native American, if +summoned out of bed at midnight, could step to his window and speak well +upon any subject.” I told him I feared he had been slightly misinformed; +I feared that many American impromptu speeches were distinguished more +by a flow of language than of ideas. But Huxley was sometimes very +impressive when he did not speak. In 1879 he was strongly advocating the +removal of the Royal School of Mines from crowded Jermyn street to South +Kensington, a matter which is still being agitated. At a public dinner +given by the alumni of the school, who were naturally attached to the +old buildings, the chairman was indiscreet enough to make an attack upon +the policy of removal. He was vigorously applauded, when, to every one’s +consternation, Huxley, who was sitting at the chairman’s right, slowly +rose, paused a moment, and then silently skirted the tables and walked +out of the hall. A solemn pall fell over us, which lasted throughout the +dinner, and we were all glad to find an excuse to leave early. + +In personal conversation Huxley was full of humor and greatly enjoyed +stories at his own expense. Such was the following: + + In my early period as a lecturer I had very little confidence in my + general powers, but one thing I prided myself upon was clearness. I + was once talking of the brain before a large mixed audience and soon + began to feel that no one in the room understood me. Finally I saw the + thoroughly interested face of a woman auditor and took consolation in + delivering the remainder of the lecture directly to her. At the close, + my feeling as to her interest was confirmed when she came up and asked + if she might put one question upon a single point which she had not + quite understood. “Certainly,” I replied. “Now, Professor,” she said, + “is the cerebellum inside or outside of the skull?” + +A story of his about babies is also characteristic: + + When a fond mother calls upon me to admire her baby I never fail to + respond, and, while cooing appropriately, I take advantage of an + opportunity to gently ascertain whether the soles of its feet turn in + and tend to support my theory of arboreal descent. + +Huxley’s life is as full of suggestion to the student as were his +lectures and his conversation. It illustrates the force of obtaining a +very broad view of the animal kingdom before we attempt to enter the +plane of higher generalization. Huxley’s training in embryology, +vertebrate and invertebrate zoology, palæontology, and geology was not +mapped out for him as for the modern university student. His prolonged +sea voyage gave him time and material for reflection, and after this he +was led from one subject to another until he obtained a grasp of nature +as a whole second only to that of Darwin. + +Huxley was born in 1825. Like Goethe, he inherited from his mother his +brilliantly alert powers of thought, and from his father his courage and +tenacity of purpose, a combination of qualities which especially fitted +him for the period in which he was to live. There is nothing striking +recorded about his boyhood as a naturalist. He preferred engineering but +was led into medicine. + +At the close of his medical course he secured a navy medical post upon +the _Rattlesnake_. This brought with it, as to Darwin, the training of a +four years’ voyage to the South Seas off eastern Australia and west +Guinea—a more liberal education to a naturalist than any university +affords, even at the present day. This voyage began at twenty-one, and +he says of it: + + But, apart from experience of this kind and the opportunity afforded + for scientific work, to me, personally, the cruise was extremely + valuable. It was good for me to live under sharp discipline, to be + down on the realities of existence by living on bare necessities, to + find out how extremely worth living life seemed to be when one woke + from a night’s rest on a soft plank, with the sky for a canopy and + cocoa and weevily biscuit the sole prospect for breakfast, and more + especially to learn to work for what I got for myself out of it. My + brother officers were as good as sailors ought to be and generally + are, but naturally they neither knew nor cared anything about my + pursuits, nor understood why I should be so zealous in the pursuit of + the objects which my friends, the middies, christened “Buffons,” after + the title conspicuous on a volume of the “Suites à Buffon,” which + stood in a prominent place on my shelf in the chart room. + +As the result of this voyage of four years numerous papers were sent +home to the Linnæan Society of London, but few were published; upon his +return his first great work, “Upon the Anatomy and Affinities of the +Medusæ,” was declined for publication by the Admiralty—a fortunate +circumstance, for it led to his quitting the navy for good and trusting +to his own resources. Upon publication, this memoir at once established +his scientific reputation at the early age of twenty-four, just as +Richard Owen had won his spurs by his “Memoir on the Pearly Nautilus.” +In 1852 Huxley’s preference as a biologist was to turn back to +physiology, which had become the favorite study of his medical course. +But his fate was to enter and become distinguished in a widely different +branch, which had as little attraction for him as for most students of +marine life, namely, palæontology. He says of his sudden change of base: + + At last, in 1854, on the translation of my warm friend, Edward Forbes, + to Edinburgh, Sir Henry de la Beche, the Director-General of the + Geological Survey, offered me the post Forbes had vacated of + Palæontologist and Lecturer on Natural History. I refused the former + point-blank, and accepted the latter only provisionally, telling Sir + Henry that I did not care for fossils and that I should give up + natural history as soon as I could get a physiological post. But I + held the office for thirty-one years, and a large part of my work has + been palæontological. + +From this time until 1885 his labors extended over the widest field of +biology and of philosophy ever covered by any naturalist, with the +single exception of Aristotle. In philosophy Huxley showed rare critical +and historical power; he made the most exhaustive study of Hume, but his +own philosophical spirit and temper were more directly the offspring of +Descartes. Some subjects he mastered, others he merely touched, but +every subject which he wrote about he illuminated. Huxley did not +discover or first define protoplasm, but he made it known to the +English-speaking world as the physical basis of life, recognizing the +unity of animal and plant protoplasm. He cleared up certain problems +among the Protozoa. In 1849 appeared his great work upon the oceanic +Hydrozoa, and familiarity with these forms doubtless suggested the +brilliant comparison of the two-layered gastrula to the adult Hydrozoa. +He threw light upon the Tunicata, describing the endostyle as a +universal feature, but not venturing to raise the Tunicata to a separate +order. He set in order the cephalopod mollusca, deriving the spiral from +the straight-shelled fossil forms. He contributed to the Arthropoda; his +last word upon this group being his charming little volume upon the +“Crayfish,” a model of its kind. But think of the virgin field which +opened up before him among the vertebrata, when in 1859 he was the first +to perceive the truth of Darwin’s theory of descent! Here were Cuvier’s +and Owen’s vast researches upon living and extinct forms, a disorderly +chaos of facts waiting for generalization. Huxley was the man for the +time. He had already secured a thoroughly philosophical basis for his +comparative osteology by studying the new embryology of Von Baer, which +Richard Owen had wholly ignored. In 1858 his famous Croonian lecture on +the “Theory of the Vertebrate Skull” gave the death-blow to Owen’s +life-work upon the skull and vertebral archetype and to the whole system +of mystical and transcendental anatomy; and now Huxley set to work +vigorously to build out of Owen’s scattered tribes the great limbs and +branches of the vertebrate tree. He set the fishes and batrachia apart +as the _Icthyopsidan_ branch, the reptiles and birds as the +_Sauropsidan_ in contrast with the _Mammalian_, which he derived from a +prosauropsidan or amphibian stem, a theory which with some modification +has received strong recent verification. + +Professor Owen, who had held undisputed sway in England up to 1858, +fought nobly for opinions which had been idolized in the first +half-century, but was routed at every point. Huxley captured his last +fortress when, in his famous essay of 1865, “Man’s Place in Nature,” he +undermined Owen’s teaching of the separate and distinct anatomical +position of man. We can only appreciate Huxley’s fighting qualities when +we see how strongly Owen was intrenched at the beginning of this long +battle royal; he was director of the British Museum and occupied other +high posts; he had the strong moral support of the government and of the +royal family, although these were weak allies in a scientific encounter. + +Huxley’s powers of rapid generalization, of course, betrayed him +frequently; his Bathybius was a groundless and short-lived hypothesis; +he went far astray in the phylogeny of the horses. But these and other +errors were far less attributable to defects in his reasoning powers +than to the extraordinarily high pressure under which he worked for the +twenty years between 1860 and 1880, when duties upon the Educational +Board, upon the Government Fisheries Commission, and upon Parliamentary +committees crowded upon him. He had at his command none of the resources +of modern technique. He cut his own sections. I remember once seeing +some of his microscopic sections. To one of our college junior students +working with a Minot microtome Huxley’s sections would have appeared +like translucent beefsteaks—another illustration that it is not always +the section which reveals the natural law, but the man who looks at the +section. + +Huxley was a master not only in the search for truth but in the way in +which he presented it, both in writing and in speaking. And we are +assured, largely as he was gifted by nature, his beautifully lucid and +interesting style was partly the result of deliberate hard work. He was +not born to it; some of his early essays are rather labored; he acquired +it. He was familiar with the best Greek literature and restudied the +language; he pored over Milton and Carlyle and Mill; he studied the fine +old English of the Bible; he took as especial models Hume and Hobbes, +until finally he wrote his mother tongue as no other Englishman wrote +it. Take up any one of his essays, biological, literary, philosophical, +you at once see his central idea and his main purpose, although he never +uses italics or spaced letters, as many of our German masters do to +relieve the obscurity of their sentences. We are carried along upon the +broad current of his reasoning without being confused by his abundant +side illustrations. He gleaned from the literature of all time until his +mind was stocked with apt similes. Who but Huxley would have selected +the title “Lay Sermons” for his first volume of addresses; or, in 1880, +twenty-one years after Darwin’s work appeared, would have entitled his +essay upon the influence of this work “The Coming of Age of the Origin +of Species”? Or to whom else would it have occurred to repeat over the +grave of Balfour the exquisitely appropriate lines: “For Lycidas is +dead, dead ere his prime”? Who else could have inveighed thus against +modern specialization: + + We are in the case of Tarpeia, who opened the gates of the Roman + citadel to the Sabines and was crushed by the weight of the reward + bestowed upon her. It has become impossible for any man to keep pace + with the progress of the whole of any important branch of science. It + looks as if the scientific, like other revolutions, meant to devour + its own children; as if the growth of science tended to overwhelm its + votaries; as if the man of science of the future were condemned to + diminish into a narrow specialist as time goes on. It appears to me + that the only defense against this tendency to the degeneration of + scientific workers lies in the organization and extension of + scientific education in such a manner as to secure breadth of culture + without superficiality; and, on the other hand, depth and precision of + knowledge without narrowness. + +What Haeckel did for evolution in Germany, Huxley did in England. As the +earliest and most ardent supporter of Darwin and the theory of descent, +it is remarkable that he never gave an unreserved support to the theory +of natural selection as all-sufficient. Twenty-five years ago, with his +usual penetration and prophetic insight, he showed that the problem of +variation might, after all, be the greater problem; and only three years +ago, in his Romanes Lecture, he disappointed many of the disciples of +Darwin by declaring that natural selection failed to explain the origin +of our moral and ethical nature. Whether he was right or wrong we will +not stop to discuss, but consider the still more remarkable conditions +of Huxley’s relations to the theory of evolution. As expositor, teacher, +defender, he was the high priest of evolution. From the first he saw the +strong and weak points of the special Darwinian theory; he wrote upon +the subject for thirty years, and yet he never contributed a single +original or novel idea to it; in other words, Huxley added vastly to the +demonstration, but never added to the sum of either theory or working +hypothesis, and the contemporary history of the theory proper could be +written without mentioning his name. This lack of speculation upon the +factors of evolution was true throughout his whole life; in the voyage +of the _Rattlesnake_, he says, he did not even think of the species +problem. His last utterance regarding the causes of evolution appeared +in one of the reviews as a passing criticism of Weismann’s finished +philosophy, in which he implies that his own philosophy of the causes of +evolution was as far off as ever; in other words, Huxley never fully +made up his mind or committed himself to any causal theory of +development. + +Taking the nineteenth century at large, outside of our own circles of +biology Huxley’s greatest and most permanent achievement was his victory +for free thought. Personally we may not be agnostic; we may disagree +with much that he has said and written, but we must admire Huxley’s +valiant services none the less. A reformer must be an extremist, and +Huxley was often extreme, but he never said what he did not believe to +be true. If it is easy for you and for me to say what we think, in print +and out of print now, it is because of the battles fought by such men as +Huxley and Haeckel. When Huxley began his great crusade the air was full +of religious intolerance, and, what is quite as bad, scientific shams. +If Huxley had entered the contest carefully and guardedly, he would have +been lost in the enemies’ ranks, but he struck right and left with +sledge-hammer blows, whether it was a high dignitary of the church or of +the state. Just before the occasion of one of his greatest contests, +that with Gladstone in the pages of _The Contemporary Review_, Huxley +was in Switzerland, completely broken down in health and suffering from +torpidity of the liver. Gladstone had written one of his +characteristically brilliant articles upon the close correspondence +between the Order of Creation as revealed in the first chapter of +Genesis and the Order of Evolution as shown by modern biology. “When +this article reached me,” Huxley told me, “I read it through and it made +me so angry that I believe it must have acted upon my liver. At all +events, when I finished my reply to Gladstone I felt better than I had +for months past.” + +Huxley’s last public appearance was at the meeting of the British +Association at Oxford in 1894. He had been very urgently invited to +attend, for, about a third of a century before, the association had met +at Oxford and Huxley had had his famous encounter with Bishop +Wilberforce. It was felt that the anniversary would be a historic one +and incomplete without his presence, and so it proved to be. Huxley’s +especial duty was to second the vote of thanks for the Marquis of +Salisbury’s address, one of the invariable formalities of the opening +meeting of the association. The meeting proved to be the greatest one in +the history of the association. The Sheldonian Theatre was packed with +one of the most distinguished scientific audiences ever brought +together, and the address of the Marquis was worthy of the occasion. The +whole tenor of it was the unknown in science. Passing from the unsolved +problems of astronomy, chemistry and physics, he came to biology. With +delicate irony he spoke of the “_comforting word, evolution_,” and +passing to the Weismannian controversy implied that the diametrically +opposed views so frequently expressed nowadays threw the whole process +of evolution into doubt. It was only too evident that the Marquis +himself found no comfort in evolution and even entertained a suspicion +as to its probability. It was well worth the whole journey to Oxford to +watch Huxley during this portion of the address. In his red +doctor-of-laws gown, placed upon his shoulders by the very body of men +who had once referred to him as “a Mr. Huxley,” he sank deeper into his +chair upon the very front of the platform and restlessly tapped his +foot. His situation was an unenviable one. He had to thank an ex-Prime +Minister of England and present Chancellor of Oxford University for an +address the sentiments of which were directly against those he himself +had been maintaining for twenty-five years. He said afterward that when +the proofs of the Marquis’s address were put in his hands the day +before, he realized that he had before him a most delicate and difficult +task. + +Lord Kelvin (Sir William Thompson), one of the most distinguished living +physicists, first moved the vote of thanks, but his reception was +nothing to the tremendous applause which greeted Huxley in the heart of +that university whose traditional principles he had so long been +opposing. Considerable anxiety had been felt by his friends lest his +voice would fail to fill the theatre, for it had signally failed during +the Romanes Lecture delivered in Oxford the year before, but when Huxley +arose he reminded one of a venerable gladiator returning to the arena +after years of absence. He raised his figure and his voice to full +height, and, with one foot turned over the edge of the step, veiled an +unmistakable and vigorous protest in the most gracious and dignified +speech of thanks. + +Throughout the subsequent special sessions of this meeting Huxley could +not appear. He gave the impression of being aged, if not infirm, but no +one realized that he had spoken his last word as champion of the law of +evolution. He soon returned to Eastbourne. Early in the winter he +contracted the grippe, which passed into pneumonia. He rallied once or +twice, and his last effort to complete a reply to Balfour’s “Foundations +of Belief” hastened his death, which came upon June 29, 1895, at the age +of seventy. + +I have endeavored to show in how many ways Huxley was a model for us of +the younger generation. In the central hall of the British Museum of +Natural History sits in marble the life-size figure of Charles Darwin; +upon his right will soon be placed a beautiful statue of Richard Owen, +and I know that there are many who will enjoy taking some share in the +movement to complete this group with the noble figure of Thomas Henry +Huxley. + + _The above Memorial was delivered before the New York Academy of + Sciences November 11, 1895. It was then revised and delivered as “A + Student’s Reminiscences of Huxley” to the assembly of students at the + Marine Biological Laboratory of Wood’s Hole, Massachusetts. As printed + in this form it was sent to Leonard Huxley, who wrote the following + letter of acknowledgment_: + + CHARTERHOUSE + GODALMING + 12 July 1897 + + DEAR PROFESSOR OSBORN: + + I have still to thank you, & that most warmly, for your admirable + “Lecture at Wood’s Hole.” It is not merely a pleasant reminder of my + meeting with you seven years ago, but one of the very best memorial + sketches of my father which have yet appeared, & so written as somehow + to succeed in touching one’s personal feelings beyond the ordinary. + Indeed if I had written to you immediately after my first reading of + it, what I wrote might have appeared a trifle exaggerated. So you will + forgive my apparent remissness in not acknowledging the receipt of it + before. I do hope you will allow me to quote from your lecture, in the + Life I am working upon—a long task, of which I am now somewhere about + the middle. + + Will you also be kind enough to tell me to what precisely you refer + when you speak of my father’s forming a wrong generalisation about the + phylogeny of the horse? His views before or after his American visit + of 1876? I do not know enough of the subject first-hand. + + Once more, let me thank you for your dear & sympathetic piece of work + & believe me + + Sincerely yours, + (Signed) LEONARD HUXLEY. + +[Illustration: + + FRANCIS MAITLAND BALFOUR +] + + + + + FRANCIS MAITLAND BALFOUR + 1851–1882 + + To Huxley and to Balfour, younger brother of Arthur Balfour, my first + and most inspiring teacher in comparative embryology, I dedicated my + work, “The Age of Mammals.” Balfour’s genius was beyond imitation, but + his pupils may follow the example of his ardent enthusiasm and his + genial way of living the life of science. + + + FRANCIS MAITLAND BALFOUR + +About a year ago came the sad news of the sudden death of Professor +Balfour, of Cambridge. If the loss was felt less severely in this +country than in England it was only because he had fewer personal +friends here, and to fully understand his worth one must have known and +talked with him. It is true that it required no unusual insight to read +the fine qualities of the man in his writings, but none save those who +knew him could appreciate his remarkable personal attractiveness. Not +the least part of the wonderful work of his short life was that which he +accomplished as a teacher; here, as everywhere, his personal influence +had a large share, and a sketch of Balfour’s scientific work would be +incomplete without a recognition of the bearing which his noble +character had upon it. + +The meeting of leading biologists to found the memorial studentship was +remarkable in many ways; rarely have been heard such words of admiration +and love for one man as were then expressed for Balfour. Many spoke at +length of the debt Cambridge owed him. It may be said that he divided +with Foster the honor of giving the great impetus to the biological +movement in the English universities. What Huxley had done for Foster +the latter did for Balfour, giving him the first hearty encouragement +and support; together they raised biology from the third to the level of +the first rank of studies at Cambridge, equalling that held by +mathematics. Oxford soon followed this important movement, trying to +secure Balfour for the professorship left vacant by the death of +Rolleston. His connection with natural science at Cambridge was +described in warm language by Foster, his teacher, and by Sedgwick, one +of his pupils; he advanced morphology there by his brilliant success in +teaching and in research. + +In teaching he combined manly force with a delicate regard for the +feelings of his pupils. From the writer’s personal impressions of him as +a lecturer, he did not aim at eloquence, but to be understood in every +step. Rarely looking at his hearers, he spoke rapidly and with intense +earnestness, crowding a vast deal into the hour. The main qualities of +his character shone forth in his lectures: energy, which he infused into +his hearers; truthfulness, which soon gave implicit confidence in his +statements; modesty and sympathy, which inspired effort and free +exchange of thought. + +Balfour’s love of truth came constantly into play in his laboratory +instruction. While looking over a student’s shoulder he would sometimes +say with a laugh: “You must interpret that specimen with the eye of +faith”; but this was very far from being a serious injunction, for he +exacted of his students the greatest caution in the progress of their +microscopic work. However tempting a certain interpretation of a +specimen might be, Balfour never accepted it until it rested on the +clearest evidence. An instance of this sort is recalled which related to +the much disputed origin of a well-known embryonic structure. A number +of sections had been prepared, seeming to confirm the view which Balfour +himself had advocated some time before; it required considerable +self-control not to attach a somewhat forced meaning to them. This was, +however, forbidden, and it was not until several days afterward that +fresh sections established the fact beyond question. + +To Foster, Balfour repaid his student-debt by extending, in turn, +continued encouragement to others. He did not fear, as many great +teachers have, that joint labor with his juniors would derogate from his +reputation. His joint articles are numerous; he was zealous to recognize +research done by his pupils, seeming to be prouder of this than of his +own work. Nothing could be more stimulating to the young men about him, +still distrustful of their powers, than this generous co-operation. Is +it surprising, then, that the voluntary attendance upon his lectures +increased in seven years from ten to ninety and that at the time of his +death twenty students were engaged in difficult research in his +laboratory? Only those who are familiar by experience with the few +incentives among younger students to the study of biology can appreciate +what these numbers mean. + +We need not attempt to give a full list of Balfour’s writings. They +began in 1873, his twenty-second year, with a few short papers appearing +over Foster’s name and his own in _The Quarterly Journal of +Microscopical Science_; they terminated nine years later with his fine +work upon Peripatus, published posthumously in the same journal. His +extensive intermediate works, “The Elasmobranch Fishes” and “Comparative +Embryology,” are universally known. + +From the first he devoted himself to embryology. While this, as among +the youngest of the biological sciences, admits of rapid work, it is far +from admitting rapid generalization. No other branch of morphology +requires more painstaking; the very materials one has to study are +minute and indefinite, and two minds will often place different +constructions upon the same specimen. There is abundant opportunity for +scientific guesswork, with the feeling of security that disproval will +be difficult. Balfour understood the real value of guessing at truth, +but he always made it very clear to the reader when he was so doing; his +hypotheses were accompanied by definite statements in which the reasons +pro and con were set forth in all impartiality to each. Herein lies the +chief charm and merit of his work, its brilliant suggestiveness, side by +side but never in confusion with well-established facts. Every chapter +contains half a dozen invitations to other investigators to prove or +disprove certain provisional statements. Vast as is the information +contained in his “Comparative Embryology,” Balfour himself appreciated +that, as far as mere facts went, the first volume would be somewhat out +of date before the second was in press. Not so, however, with his +masterly discussions of these facts, which are found on every page and +the value of which, to embryologists, cannot be estimated. Moreover, to +his authorship is largely due the rapidly spreading interest in +embryology in England and America—a branch of science, it will be +remembered, which had previously been mostly in German hands. + +One frequently heard from him his own very modest opinion of his work; +this was not at all inconsistent with striking independence and +originality of thought and adherence to his convictions. His modesty +added more to the recognition of his genius than any assertions of his +own could have done. Many were pressing forward to assert his claims, +and honors were showered upon him in England and abroad. He was admired +and beloved by all who knew him. In scientific discussion he had the +rare quality, which Richard Cobden is said to have possessed, of +remaining on the pleasantest personal terms with his opponents. + +His energy in all matters was great and his power of writing was +unusually rapid; but, advised by kind friends, he rarely overtaxed his +strength, which was limited. He spent most of his evenings with his +friends, throwing off from his mind the labors of the day and talking +vivaciously upon the topics of the time. When the first volume of his +“Comparative Embryology” was being written, he generally worked but five +hours daily, giving much time to physical exercise, bicycling or tennis, +into which he entered with all the enthusiasm of his nature. He was +courageous but not reckless, and nothing in his previous life would lead +us to suppose that the mountain climb which proved fatal was undertaken +in a foolhardy spirit. + +Balfour in a few years accomplished the work of a lifetime. His +influence was and is twofold: first, upon those with whom he came into +personal contact, especially his scientific associates and students, an +influence which cannot fail to endure (well expressed by Professor +Kitchen Parker: “I feel that his presence is still with me; I cannot +lose the sense of his presence”); secondly, the influence of his +scientific work, which for genius, breadth, and truth can never be +surpassed. May the splendid memorial which has been raised for him +perpetuate his noble example as a teacher and man of science. + +[Illustration: + + _From a photograph by Brown Brothers_ + + JAMES BRYCE +] + + + + + JAMES BRYCE + 1838–1922 + + I had the privilege of knowing James Bryce for many years and enjoyed + many long and delightful conversations with him. Beyond all other + great men I have known he impressed me as most eager for broad and + deep knowledge both of men and of nature. He gained more by travel and + direct observation than by reading the works of others. + + Although an address was carefully thought out, the following was + entirely extemporaneous, because I was suddenly called upon to deliver + it in the pulpit of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine—quite a + contrast to the customary platform of the college and university + lecturer! I felt compelled by the surrounding religious atmosphere to + use a text, which was happily afforded by the choir as it sang + Newman’s beautiful hymn as a processional. + + + JAMES BRYCE + +I am not permitted to have a text, because I am not a preacher. As a +naturalist, I am speaking here by invitation of the Bishop and the Dean +of this Cathedral on the life of James Bryce as a student of man and of +nature. I find in the opening of the beautiful hymn sung by the choir on +entering this Cathedral the words which I cannot resist paraphrasing as +the central thought of what I am about to say: Lead, Kindly Light, amid +the encircling confusion. + +“Lead, Kindly Light,” was the inner motive of the life of James +Bryce—the kindly light of the genial nature of a man of faith and +confidence, of a man of rugged resolution and constant determination, +who never faltered in his efforts, whether it was a physical, or social, +or intellectual, or political problem, to throw upon it the light of +most careful and thorough examination. + +Then another line of the same beautiful poem of John Henry Newman, + + O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, + +reveals the other aspect of the life of James Bryce which will impress +you if you will read his four volumes as a traveler and explorer. When +confused by the world and by the strife of political parties, Bryce +would go off quietly on one of these great journeys of his, borne by his +stout Scotch heart and by his indomitable energy as a mountain-climber. +Brought up in a climate which brings out the best qualities in a +man—that hardy nursery of strong Britons; born in northern Ireland, +where the kindly qualities and genial nature of the Irish blend with the +sturdy persistence of the Scotch, he was equipped by birth as well as by +the early training of a remarkable father to enter life along many paths +which opened out before him. + +Follow him, no doubt somewhat confused, at the age of thirty-nine, after +a period of political service in Parliament and lectureship in Oxford +University, on that remarkable journey through and beyond the countries +which he studied in his “Holy Roman Empire,” into and through Asia +Minor, into the region on the borderland of Armenia, in search of Mount +Ararat, and you observe an event in his life most typical and +characteristic. Every one told him it was impossible to ascend Mount +Ararat. One after another the parties that started with him fell behind, +until, finally, about four or five thousand feet from the summit, he was +entirely alone, and from that point he pushed on to the hollow between +the twin peaks where the Bible myth tells us the Ark of Noah rested. He +did not find any traces of the Ark, but he seems to have found, in that +ascent and in the wonderful survey which the ascent gave him of the +great tides of human history which have ebbed and flowed around the base +of that mountain, a new and fresh perspective for all his future +historical works. There, also, at the turning-point in life, when +according to some men the critical age of forty is reached, James Bryce +reversed the natural order of things, and until the age of +eighty-three—during the latter part of which period I had the honor of +making his acquaintance—became a younger man, a larger man, a greater +man every year to all those who had the pleasure and privilege and +inspiration of knowing him. + +What a contrast his thoroughness with the superficiality of other men +who have treated the same broad periods of human history, of human +activity, and to whom many people appeal for light and guidance! Wells, +writing his “Outline of History” from his armchair, guided by the work +of all the authors upon whom he could lay his hand; Bryce, seeking out +the fountains, the origins, the beginnings of these wonderful movements +of peoples which are summed up in the words “Human History.” Himself +retreading the paths worn by men for centuries, observing that wonderful +variety of races of men where, in entering Transcaucasia, he came on the +borders between Turkey and the Russian Dominions; again, when in South +Africa, he touched the life of the Kaffirs, of the Hottentots, and of +that race of Bushmen which stands at the very bottom of the human scale; +finally, in South America, at the age of seventy-four, he entered the +intimate life of a people he had not touched before, of the Spanish, the +Portuguese, the native Indians of the South American Continent—always +traveling with the same genial attitude, the same kindliness, the same +lack of criticism, which distinguished his life and writings throughout. + +Small wonder that, having as a boy and young man been brought up among +the British people, among the Scotch, the Irish, the English, the +Scotch-Irish, who are the fountains of our own American life, when he +came to America he understood the Americans and was welcomed as one of +us, as a man who could interpret our life, our institutions, who could +tell us the truth about ourselves without our being offended, the most +difficult message that any one coming from any other part of the world +can give to the American! + +Now we find that Bryce is not dead! James Bryce is not dead! James Bryce +is living! He will live! Out of his inspiration, from those penetrating +eyes, from that wonderful intellect, from those profound and unbiassed +and unprejudiced studies, out of the fruits of years of personal +experience, he finally surveys our American institutions in the last, +and one of the greatest, of his works, “Modern Democracies.” Nothing +could attest the truthfulness of his nature more clearly than the fact +that the note of that volume is so different from the note of his early, +confident writings as a young ardent Liberal, almost Radical. He found +in our midst, and in the new democracies everywhere, so many confusing +thoughts, so many unexpected counter-currents, that he comes out, as +does every great and profound student of human life and human affairs +who approaches the matter from the scientific standpoint of profound +knowledge, with a clear warning of the dangers which surround us if we +do not take heed and if we lose the art of choosing our leaders, our +spiritual leaders, our intellectual leaders, our political leaders. + +Leadership! Leadership is the last note, to my mind, of Bryce’s life. He +is leading. He himself will lead because he has become now, and I +believe for all time, the Kindly Light which will guide us through the +interpretation of our American institutions. + +[Illustration: + + _From a painting by A. Edelfelt_ + + LOUIS PASTEUR +] + + + + + LOUIS PASTEUR + 1822–1895 + + To my mind Louis Pasteur is the greatest benefactor of mankind since + the time of Jesus Christ, and as he was inspired by religious + sentiment I claim that he should be enrolled among the saints and + enshrined in our cathedrals. It is of this aspect of his life that + “The New Order of Sainthood” deals. Contemplation of this aspect of + his life led me to reflections upon Nature and Religion, in which I + was greatly aided by my previous studies in the natural philosophy of + the Greeks and of Augustine and was guided to the wonderful passages + of Dante in “The Divine Comedy” by Bishop Boyd-Carpenter. The sequel + to this address is to be found in “Evolution and Religion,” my reply + to William Jennings Bryan. + + + THE NEW ORDER OF SAINTHOOD + +Among all the great scientific men whom the nineteenth century produced +Pasteur ranks supreme as a benefactor of mankind. He played the original +and creative part in the movement for the prevention and relief of human +suffering which Sir William Osler has aptly termed “Man’s Redemption of +Man.” It is far under the truth to say that he has saved more lives than +Napoleon destroyed. In nature he found the causes of a very large part +of human suffering; in nature he also found the means of controlling or +averting suffering. His attitude toward his fellow men was one of noble +compassion. His first trial of the hydrophobia serum with a young +sufferer brought to him, his agony of mind lest the remedy itself might +be the means of causing death, his joy as the child was restored in +perfect health to its parents, is one of the most beautiful episodes in +human history. As recited by Radot, “Pasteur was going through a +succession of hopes, fears, anguish, and an ardent yearning to snatch +little Meister from death; he could no longer work. At night feverish +visions came to him of this child, whom he had seen playing in the +garden, suffocating in the mad struggles of hydrophobia, like the dying +child he had seen at the Hôpital Trousseau in 1880. Vainly his +experimental genius assured him that the virus of that most terrible of +diseases was about to be vanquished, that humanity was about to be +delivered from this dread horror—his human tenderness was stronger than +all, his accustomed ready sympathy for the sufferings and anxieties of +others was for the nonce centred in ‘the dear lad.’... + +“Cured from his wounds, delighted with all he saw, gayly running about +as if he had been in his own Alsatian farm, little Meister, whose blue +eyes now showed neither fear nor shyness, merrily received the last +inoculation; in the evening, after claiming a kiss from ‘Dear Monsieur +Pasteur,’ as he called him, he went to bed and slept peacefully.”[4] + +The life of Pasteur is typical of that of many students of nature, of +less genius, perhaps, but of equal devotion and self-sacrifice. It is +interesting to imagine what tributes might have been rendered to Pasteur +if he had lived in the period of the early saints of the Church and had +won the love of his generation and the reverence of succeeding +generations by his mighty works. It is interesting to surmise what would +have been the attitude of the early Church toward such a benefactor of +mankind. Our belief today is that Pasteur should stand as a symbol of +the profound and intimate relation which must develop between the study +of nature and the religious life of man, between our present and future +knowledge of nature and the development of our religious conceptions and +beliefs. + + +In a very beautiful address[5] before the students of the University of +Edinburgh Sir William Osler opens with the words: “To man there has been +published a triple gospel—of his soul, of his goods, of his body.” What +is and what shall be the attitude of the Church toward the gospel of the +body, toward the men who have given us this gospel? The question turns +our thoughts at once to the leading and greatest exponent of this +gospel, and backward to the early centuries of the Church before there +had arisen any divorce between the study of nature and the matters of +the spirit. + +We are now in a process of readjustment between the issues of two lines +of thought, which are almost as old as human history; between laws +derived from nature which were discovered in the middle of the +nineteenth century as to the origin of man, and traditional laws which +when traced to their very beginnings we find to have been purely of +human conception. Let us imagine our descendants three or four hundred +years hence looking back on the spiritual and intellectual history of +man; with larger perspective, they will separate these two grand +thought-movements: + +First, the Oriental movement, marked by Oriental lack of curiosity about +natural law, a great moral and spiritual movement developing three +thousand years before Christ along the Nile, the Tigris, and Euphrates, +out of five thousand years of hard human experience, and expressed in +Judea in the faith that nature is the continuous handiwork of God, in a +supreme standard of righteousness, the moral duty being finally summed +up in the single phrase, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” This +was the spiritual redemption of man, which left the laws of his physical +welfare unknown and uncared for. + +The second movement begins six centuries before Christ in the inquiring +mind of the West, which is always characterized by intense curiosity +about nature. This movement is the search for natural law. Its rapid +progress among the Greeks terminates with the fall of Greece. It is +expressed in Cato’s reply to Scipio: “My wisdom consists in the fact +that I follow Nature, the best of guides, as I would a God and am loyal +to her commands.” After nineteen centuries it revives with Copernicus +and Galileo and culminates in Darwin. Man is again perceived as a part +of nature; in the study of nature man finds intellectual delight; in the +laws of nature man finds his physical well-being; man through nature +becomes the redeemer of physical man. + +The Augustinian theology was imbued with a deeply theistic view of +nature, a view which the modern Church professes but does not profoundly +believe nor live by. As shown by Aubrey Moore, Augustine was entirely +sound in counselling the entire separation of these two great lines of +thought, the natural and the spiritual. “It very often happens,” says +Augustine, “that there is some question as to the earth or the sky, or +the other elements of this world ... respecting which one who is not a +Christian has knowledge derived from most certain reasoning or +observation [that is, a natural philosopher], and it is very disgraceful +and mischievous and of all things to be carefully avoided, that a +Christian, speaking of such matters as being according to the Christian +Scriptures, should be heard by an unbeliever talking such nonsense that +the unbeliever, perceiving him to be as wide from the mark as east from +west, can hardly restrain himself from laughing.” + +Augustine held what may be regarded as a pristine faith in nature as a +manifestation of the divine. This pristine theistic view is founded on +passages in Genesis, especially Genesis 2:15 and Genesis 3:19: + + And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to + dress it and to keep it. (Genesis 2:15.) + + In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto + the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto + dust shalt thou return. (Genesis 3:19.) + +These passages show that nature, typified by the garden, gives man his +sustenance, and yet, as it has to be won by the sweat of the brow, man’s +energy or art must work with nature. These passages, as Bishop +Boyd-Carpenter observes in his inspiring studies of Dante, are also the +foundation of the famous lines in the “Divine Comedy” in which the poet +expresses the relation between the theistic view of nature and +scientific or philosophical inquiry. + + ... He thus made reply: + “Philosophy, to an attentive ear, + Clearly points out, not in one part alone, + How imitative Nature takes her course + From the celestial Mind, and from its art: + And where her laws[6] the Stagirite unfolds, + Not many leaves scann’d o’er, observing well, + Thou shalt discover that your art on her + Obsequious follows, as the learner treads + In his instructor’s step; so that your art + Deserves the name of second in descent + From God. These two, if thou recall to mind + Creation’s holy book,[7] from the beginning + Were the right source of life and excellence + To humankind....” + +The preceding is Cary’s version.[8] Another version of this passage is +that of Longfellow.[9] + + “Philosophy,” he said, “to him who heeds it, + Noteth, not only in one place alone, + After what manner Nature takes her course + From Intellect Divine and from its art; + And if thy Physics carefully thou notest, + After not many pages shalt thou find, + That this your art as far as possible + Follows, as the disciple doth the master, + So that your art is, as it were, God’s grandchild. + From these two, if thou bringest to thy mind + Genesis at the beginning, it behooves + Mankind to gain their life, and to advance.” + +As Bishop Boyd-Carpenter remarks, Virgil’s answer to Dante is to this +effect: We learn from philosophy that the operations of nature proceed +directly from God, and those of art indirectly, because art consists in +the imitation of nature. (“Inferno,” XI, pp. 97–105, Longfellow’s +translation.) Again, the Bible teaches us that it is by these two +principles, nature and art, that the system of man’s life should be +ordered. (“Inferno,” XI, pp. 106–108.) + +If we are guided by the spirit of Augustine and of Dante we cannot fail +to see that the Church has passed through a very critical period of +scepticism as regards nature. This is perhaps an original view of +scepticism, but there is no way of evading its application; if nature +represents the wisdom and goodness of God, to be blind to its +interpretation is a form of scepticism—devout and well-intentioned +though it may be. Especially the Roman Church has been led away from its +pristine faith in nature as a manifestation of the divine, while the +Protestant Church, in consequence of this loss of faith during the +nineteenth century, has suffered a loss of influence in the world which +it will require a long period to regain. If the laws of nature are +manifestations of the divine power and wisdom, as we proclaim in our +services, the attitude of the Church toward these laws should not be +hesitant, defensive, or apologetic, but active, receptive, and +aggressive. + +Considered in this way, the great scientific inquiry of the latter half +of the nineteenth century, so far from being regarded as destructive, is +a constructive, purifying and regenerating movement; it takes us back to +the lost faith of our fathers, a faith which spiritualized the Old +Testament, a faith which finds in nature a manifestation of the divine +order of things. Pasteur showed the way to the physical redemption of +man, as Newton had opened to us the new heavens and Darwin the new +earth. If we were to rewrite the Litany in the twentieth century, for +the passage, “From plague, pestilence, and famine, good Lord, deliver +us,” we should read, “From ignorance of Thy Laws and disobedience of Thy +Commands, good Lord, deliver us.” + + +From the standpoint of this older teaching of Augustine and Dante the +life-work of Louis Pasteur was more than humanitarian, it was more than +scientific; it was religious. He regarded natural processes which in +their superficial view appear relentless, cruel, wholly inexplicable, as +part of a possibly beneficent order of things; he again revealed through +his profound insight, through his unparalleled toil, discouragement, and +even scorn on the part of his contemporaries, deeper laws, which are +beneficent, protective, and restorative in action. He was the evangelist +of Osler’s “third gospel”: “And the third gospel, the gospel of his +body, which brings man into relation with nature—a true _evangelion_, +the glad tidings of a conquest beside which all others sink into +insignificance—is the final conquest of nature, out of which has come +man’s redemption of man.... + +“If in the memorable phrase of the Greek philosopher Prodicus, ‘that +which benefits human life is God,’ we may see in this new gospel a link +betwixt us and the crowning race of those who eye to eye shall look on +knowledge, and in whose hand nature shall be an open book, an approach +to the glorious day of which Shelley sings so gloriously: + + Happiness + And Science dawn though late upon the earth; + Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame; + Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here, + Reason and passion cease to combat there, + Whilst mind unfettered o’er the earth extends + Its all-subduing energies, and wields + The sceptre of a vast dominion there.” + +Should we not institute a new order of sainthood for men like Pasteur? +Could we find one more eminent for consecration, piety, and service in +life and character than this devout investigator? Entrance to this order +would be granted to those who through the study of Nature have extended +the bounds of human knowledge, have bestowed incomparable blessings on +the human race, have relieved human suffering, have saved or prolonged +human life. Would not a statue of Louis Pasteur in the Cathedral of St. +John the Divine proclaim the faith of the modern Church that the two +great historic movements of Love and of Knowledge, of the spiritual and +intellectual and the physical well-being of man, are harmonious parts of +a single and eternal truth? On the base of such a statue might be +inscribed the words written by Pasteur in the most perplexing period of +his life: + + “GOD GRANT THAT BY MY PERSEVERING LABORS I MAY BRING A LITTLE STONE TO + THE FRAIL AND ILL-ASSURED EDIFICE OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THOSE DEEP + MYSTERIES OF LIFE AND DEATH WHERE ALL OUR INTELLECTS HAVE SO + LAMENTABLY FAILED.” + +[Illustration: + + _From a photograph by Gutekunst_ + + JOSEPH LEIDY +] + + + + + JOSEPH LEIDY + 1823–1891 + + Joseph Leidy may be known as the founder of vertebrate palæontology in + America, since he followed the pioneers in this branch of science, in + which America has become so famous, and since he was succeeded by + Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Marsh. Leidy and Cope were the very + last representatives in America of the older school of naturalists and + anatomists, who covered a very broad field. They both covered this + field with consummate ability. In studying Leidy’s life we observe him + as a master of detail, whereas Cope was a master of generalization. + Their devotion to the _École des Faits_ rendered most distinguished + service to American science. + + + JOSEPH LEIDY, FOUNDER OF VERTEBRATE PALÆONTOLOGY IN AMERICA + +I ask the indulgence of the members of this gathering in honor of Joseph +Leidy and fellow workers in the fields of science if I present what I +have to say in an informal manner, and I trust that you will not for a +moment imagine that, because it is presented informally, I do not +appreciate the honor conferred upon me in asking me to speak on this +historic occasion in reference to a man for whom I have such great +admiration as for Joseph Leidy. I shall not repeat except in a very +general way the homage that was paid to Leidy in the series of important +and penetrating addresses which we have listened to today, but I shall +endeavor to present a summary, especially along the lines of +palæontology and comparative anatomy, of some of the distinctive +features of his work in comparison with those of the men who accompanied +and immediately followed him, and to show what great results have come +from his efforts as a pioneer and as a founder of this most interesting +and fascinating branch of science in America. + +Leidy started with an entirely new world of life; he soon learned that +he could not base his study of American fossils on the work of French +palæontologists, for the life of our western regions was not known in +the Old World. Every specimen represented a new species or a new genus +or a new family, and in some cases a new order. Never was there a +greater opportunity than was offered to Leidy in this virgin field of +our then virgin West. Never was a man more ready to grasp it than that +quiet, unpretentious, unassuming, wonderfully gifted observer of nature. +It is particularly interesting to review his work, which was written in +the exact spirit of Cuvier, and to see his long record of direct +observation of the entire extinct fauna not only of the eastern but, +especially, of the great western territories. We find today how +permanent that work was, how little we have to modify it, how well it +stands the test of time, how accurate are his descriptions, how perfect +his figures and illustrations, and how even today they form admirable +standards for all the work that has been done since. After a continuous +series of epoch-making papers and contributions which he was in the +habit of contributing year after year, in meeting after meeting of the +academy, he brought his initial work to a climax in 1869 when he +published his great monograph, “Extinct Mammalian Fauna of Nebraska and +Dakota.” That work still ranks in breadth and accuracy as the finest +single contribution that has been made to vertebrate palæontology in +this country, if not in the world. + +Whereas in Leidy we had a man of the exact observer type, Cope was a man +who loved speculation. If Leidy was the natural successor of Cuvier, +Cope was the natural successor of Lamarck. Leidy, in his contributions +to the academy, covered the whole world of nature, from the Protozoa and +Infusoria up to man, and he lived as the last great naturalist in the +world of the old type who was able by both capacity and training to +cover the whole field of nature. Cope, in contrast, mastered—and this +mastery in itself was a wonderful achievement—the entire domain of +vertebrates from the fishes up. Marsh, with less breadth and less +ability, nevertheless was a palæontologist of a very high order and had +a genius for appreciating what might be called the most important thing +in science. He always knew where to explore, where to seek the +transition stages, and he never lost the opportunity to point out at the +earliest possible moment the most significant fact to be discovered and +disseminated. + +It is most interesting to contrast the temperament of these three men, +Joseph Leidy, Edward Drinker Cope, and Othniel Charles Marsh. They were +as different as any three men could possibly be made, both by nature and +nurture. As Professor Edward Smith said, in one of his addresses on +Leidy, “scientists are only mortals after all.” Your scientific genius +may hitch up with a star on the one hand and with an anchor on the +other. Whereas Leidy was essentially a man of peace, Cope was what might +be called a militant palæontologist. Whereas Leidy’s motto was peace at +any price, Cope’s was war whatever it cost. I do not know that I can +find from Shakespeare any characterization of Joseph Leidy, but I think +in “Henry IV” there is a pretty good characterization of my friend +Edward D. Cope: + + I am not yet of Percy’s mind, the Hotspur of the north; he that kills + me some six or seven dozen of Scots at a breakfast, washes his hands, + and says to his wife, “Fie upon this quiet life! I want work.” + +Perhaps there was a scientific providence in all this; perhaps such +antagonistic spirits were necessary to enliven and disseminate interest +in this branch of science throughout the country. This subtle combative +quality in a palæontologist is a strange quality; it is a strange +inversion, because the more ancient and difficult the study, the more +refractory the fossil, the greater the animation of discussion regarding +its relationships. From this subtle ferment there arose the famous +rivalry which existed not between Leidy and either of the others, +because it was impossible to quarrel with Leidy, but between Cope, the +descendant of a Quaker family, and Marsh, the nephew of a great +philanthropist. When I took up the subject as a young man and first came +to the City of Brotherly Love I always expected to learn of some fresh +discussion, some recent combat; it was even in the shade of the Academy +of Natural Sciences that one found echoes of these convulsive movements. +I remember one day coming into the dignified halls of the academy and +finding two of the youthful attendants engaged in hot discussion over a +dispute they had overheard at a meeting of the academy the night before. + +Leidy, after the characterizations that we have heard of his life from +Conklin, Jennings, Scott and others, occupied a pivotal position, a very +interesting pivotal position. He was in an intellectual environment and +more or less in a social environment entirely different from our own. +This is very important to keep in mind in estimating his work. In spirit +he was, I think, a true pre-Darwinian in the sense of seeking what may +be called facts for Darwin and in the breadth and scope of his +researches. But he lived in an entirely different intellectual +atmosphere from that which surrounds our scientific world of today; he +was a John the Baptist for Charles Darwin. We must remember that twelve +years before Darwin brought forth the “Origin of Species” this young man +was beginning to assemble a mass of data which would have been of great +value to the great British naturalist. As shown by Professor Scott, he +was tracing the ancestral lineage of the horse, the camel, the +rhinoceros, the tapir family, the titanotheres, and last, but not least, +the anatomical forebears of man. + +Nevertheless, Leidy was an evolutionist _sub rosa_; he was an +evolutionist without ever using the word evolution. There is no doubt +about that when you read a citation from his writings such as was +selected by Professor Jennings: + + The study of the earth’s crust teaches us that very many species of + plants and animals became extinct at successive periods, while other + races originated to occupy their places. This probably was the result, + in many cases, of a change in exterior conditions incompatible with + the life of certain species and favorable to the primitive production + of others.... Living beings did not exist upon the earth prior to + their indispensable conditions of action, but wherever these have been + brought into operation concomitantly, the former originated.... Of the + life, present everywhere with its indispensable conditions, and coeval + in its origin with them, what was the immediate cause? It could not + have existed upon earth prior to its essential conditions; and is it, + therefore, the result of these? There appear to be but trifling steps + from the oscillating particles of inorganic matter to a bacterium; + from this to a vibrio, thence to a monas, and so gradually up to the + highest orders of life! The most ancient rocks containing remains of + living beings indicate the contemporaneous existence of the more + complex as well as the simplest of organic forms; but, nevertheless, + life may have been ushered upon earth, through oceans of the lowest + types, long previously to the deposit of the oldest palæozoic rocks as + known to us. + +This really is a sketch in 1847 of environment and survival such as we +now know to be the actual course of evolution and was truly anticipatory +of modern results, substituting modern language as we may do for the +quaint phraseology of the period. + +On the subject of the evolution of man especially Leidy certainly had +very clear and positive ideas. He caught from Goethe the significance of +the occasional reversion and the embryonic suture between the +premaxillary and maxillary bones—constituting a single bone in the human +subject, two bones in the lower order of mammals. He pointed out this +suture in 1847 in the skull of a native from one of the Hollander +Islands. In 1849 he pointed out the separate embryonic condition of the +intermaxillary bones. In both cases, as was his habit, Leidy obviously +saw the significance but, always sticking to facts and a presentation of +facts, he let the matter rest there. The most pronounced adumbration, +however, of the evolution of man from the primates is to be found in a +citation of his volume of 1873, a period when the descent of man was +still not recognized: + + But little change would be necessary to evolve from the jawbone and + teeth of _Notharctus_ that of the modern monkey. The same condition + that would lead to the suppression of a first premolar tooth in + continuance would reduce the fangs of the other premolars to a single + one. This change with the common teeth shortening and the increase of + the depth of the jaw would give the character of the living South + American monkey. A further reduction would give rise to the condition + of the jaw in the Old World apes and in man. + +I do not need to point out that the human jaw, next to the human +forehead, is the most significant feature in the transformation from the +lower to the higher primates. But some of those here present may not +know that a monograph has been written by my successor and colleague, +Professor William K. Gregory, upon the genus _Notharctus_ Leidy. +Gregory, fifty years after this significant passage was written by +Leidy, chose _Notharctus_ as an ideal intermediate type to place in a +theoretic ancestral series leading up to man, and in the beautiful +series of preparations which he has recently completed showing the +development of the human face in all stages from the most remote +ancestral facial type to the modern human face, Gregory uses +_Notharctus_ as the pivotal point, just as did Leidy fifty years ago. + +To return to the matter of Leidy’s intellectual environment: how much we +owe today to our intellectual environment, how much we owe to battles +which have been fought and won over insufficient evidence! Not battles +of words, but battles of facts. Such evidence as that of _Notharctus_ +the alert vision of Leidy detected and put in its proper place. In those +days “mum” was the word as regards evolution. Neither Cuvier nor Owen, +the British successor of Cuvier, nor Louis Agassiz, great naturalists +all, had accepted the theory; theologic influence was still +all-powerful. Fortunately for Leidy, William Jennings Bryan was still in +embryo. Trying to form an historic parallel of William Jennings Bryan, I +think it may be found in the figure of King Canute sitting with his +court on the shores of Nature, trying to beat back the waves of Truth. +If Leidy had lived in the era of Bryan, he undoubtedly would have been +classified with Professor Conklin and myself—he would have been made +with us a type of a new genus, _Anathema maranatha_, in which, according +to the zoology of Bryan, are embraced “tall professors coming down out +of trees who would push good people not believing in evolution off the +sidewalk.” Leidy would not have been burned at the stake, only because +of legal obstacles. Similarly, I think that Professor Conklin and myself +owe our lives to the fact that _autos da fé_ in matters of belief are no +longer matters of common practice in our civilization! + +It is perhaps particularly fitting that Professor Scott and myself were +asked to speak at this centenary, for one reason above others. We have +been the defendants and supporters of the Leidy tradition. I am not +quite sure, but I doubt if you will find in the writings of Professor +Cope or Professor Marsh a single allusion to the work of Leidy. I make +this statement subject to verification, but I do not recall in their +writings a single allusion to the work of Leidy, except a brief tribute +by Marsh in an early address; the rivalry between the two men went to +such lengths that in their race with each other Leidy was totally +forgotten. Every new animal that was discovered was given a new +scientific name by each of them. _Notharctus_ Leidy, for example, is +exactly the same animal as _Tomitherium_ Cope and _Limnotherium_ Marsh. +Thus arose a trinominal system—three names each for the Eocene and +Oligocene animals—the original Leidy name and the Cope and Marsh names. +It has been the painful duty of Professor Scott and myself to devote +thirty of the best years of our lives trying to straighten out this +nomenclatural chaos. Even to this day we are verifying the observations +of Leidy; we find that he never made an incorrect observation or +published an incorrect figure; his accuracy in these regards is one of +his greatest and most permanent claims to immortality as a +palæontologist. + +I do not know that I altogether agree with my friend Conklin in his +address as to the relation of extensive and intensive work. If I +understand him aright, he rather implies that intensive work is an +inevitable feature of modern scientific progress. I would rather cite +Leidy as an example of a man who pursued intensive work and extensive +work simultaneously and who had the capacity to pursue intensive work in +several branches of science, biological and geological, and I would +regard the permanence of Leidy’s work as largely the result of the state +of mind produced by the breadth of his intensive as well as of his +extensive work. I would like to leave on your minds my conviction, +buttressed by Leidy’s life, that it will be necessary even for those of +our day to maintain the Leidy attitude, because, after all, it is in +_the single mind that great hypotheses and theories are generated_. The +comparative anatomist, if he dies out, will leave human anatomy +impoverished. Today our students should return to the Leidy attitude, as +Professor Scott said, of entering palæontology by way of medicine and +base our education in human anatomy, as Leidy did, on a broad knowledge +of comparative anatomy. This is only one instance out of very many that +might be given of the legacies of Leidy to us: namely, that throughout +his life his mind had continuously the intensive as well as the +extensive attitude. He was able to be on the mountain-top and then +descend into the valley, and I believe that while some men who pursue +one subject intensively all their lives are making great discoveries, +for example, such workers as Professor Michelson, whom we all honor, the +chances are that few men can make great discoveries unless they approach +the subject broadly and work from more than one angle of thought. + +Speaking of immortality, I share rather the Leidy view than the view of +Cope. I wish it were possible to resurrect Joseph Leidy and to bring him +back into the field of modern American palæontology. I wish it were +possible to bring him back to life and to have taken him with me, for +example, in a motorcar across the wastes of Mongolia. I can imagine the +joy with which he would have welcomed coming upon the remains of the +land dinosaurs, recalling his first description of a dinosaur in +America, in the very heart of the great Desert of Gobi; and perhaps the +still greater joy with which he would have greeted one of his +titanotheres, one of the first mammals which he described from Wyoming, +out on a great plain on the border of the Desert of Gobi. + +The desire for this kind of immortality reminds me often of the Greek +poet: + + To live like man and yet like nature to endure, + That double gift, to man and nature both denied, + The Gods alone enjoy. + +We are rewriting this beautiful Greek verse in the immortality of +Leidy’s work, and we are holding up his example for the prevailing +spirit of truthfulness, which is, after all, its most characteristic +single feature. Would that Leidy and Huxley and Richard Owen and Cuvier +and Marsh and Cope could see the heights which have been reached in the +branch of science to which they devoted their lives and fortunes. +Leidy’s infant science, in which it was most hazardous to make +predictions, has now reached the stage which I believe is the finest in +the history of any science—the stage of prediction—that, as astronomers +have predicted the existence of unknown and unseen planets, +palæontologists can also predict unknown and unseen forms of life and, +moreover, can point out where they may be found. + +Is our palæontological path reaching its goal? I think not. Its final +goal will be reached when palæontologists are able through extensive and +intensive methods to join hands with workers in other biological fields +and when we are able, pursuing our branch in the Leidy spirit, to bring +together into one harmony—the harmony which certainly exists, although +at present we do not see it—by bringing together into one harmony the +great underlying principle, the multiple aspects of which we can sum up +in the word “evolution.” + +[Illustration: + + _From a photograph by Gutekunst_ + + EDWARD DRINKER COPE +] + + + + + EDWARD DRINKER COPE + 1840–1897 + + Undoubtedly the most brilliant palæontologist of America and one of + the most brilliant scientists America has produced. This biography + fittingly follows that of Joseph Leidy, although there is the greatest + possible contrast between the life and works of the two men: Cope, + brilliant, daring, combative; Leidy, patient, persistent, cautious, + conservative. It was a contrast between the temperamental Gaelic and + the stable Teutonic type. The work of both men will endure for all + time. That of Cope requires constant emendation and revision, but it + leaves a firm and broad foundation for our knowledge of the evolution + of the vertebrata. Leidy was a master of detail, of accurate + description, of finished workmanship, rarely venturing generalization, + but he left a treasure-house of splendidly collected facts. + + The work of Professor Cope began in 1859, a most favorable year, when + comparative anatomy first felt the impetus of Darwin’s “Origin of + Species.” He was then only nineteen, and for thirty-eight years + thereafter his active genius hastened our progress in the knowledge + and classification of all the great divisions of the vertebrata. He + passed away on April 12, 1897, at the age of fifty-seven, in the full + vigor of his intellectual powers, leaving a large part of his work + incomplete. Almost at the last he contributed several reviews to _The + American Naturalist_, and on the Tuesday preceding his death he sent + to the press the Syllabus of his lectures before the University of + Pennsylvania, containing his latest opinions regarding the arrangement + and evolution of the vertebrata. + + + A GREAT NATURALIST + +Edward Drinker Cope was born in Philadelphia July 28, 1840, of +distinguished American ancestry. His grandfather, Caleb Cope, was the +staunch Quaker of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who protected Major André +from mob violence. Thomas Pim Cope, his grandfather, founded the house +of Cope Brothers, famous in the early mercantile annals of Philadelphia. +His father, Alfred, the junior member of the firm, was a man of very +active intellect and showed rare judgment in Edward’s education. + +Together the father and son became brisk investigators, the father +stimulating by questions and by travel the strong love of nature and of +natural objects which the son showed at an unusually early age. In +August, 1857, they took a sea voyage to Boston, and the son’s journal is +full of drawings of jellyfish, grampuses, and other natural objects seen +by the way. When eight and a half years old he made his first visit to +the Museum of the Academy of Natural Sciences, “on the 21st day of the +10th Mo., 1848,” as entered in his journal. He brought away careful +drawings, measurements, and descriptions of several larger birds, but +especially the figure of the entire skeleton of an ichthyosaur, with +this quaint memorandum: “Two of the sclerotic plates look at the +eye—thee will see these in it.” At the age of ten he was taken upon a +longer voyage to the West Indies. It is not improbable that these +voyages exerted a lasting influence upon him. + +The principal impression he gave in boyhood was of incessant activity in +mind and body, of quick and ingenious thought, reaching in every +direction for knowledge, and of great independence in character and +action. It is evident that he owed far more to the direct study of +nature and to his own impulses as a young investigator than to the five +or six years of formal education which he received at school. He was +especially fond of map drawing and of geographical studies. His natural +talent for languages may have been cultivated in some degree by his +tutor, Dr. Joseph Thomas, an excellent linguist, editor of a +biographical dictionary. Many of his spare winter hours were passed at +the Academy of Natural Sciences. After the age of thirteen the summer +intervals of boarding-school life and later of tutoring were filled +among the woods, fields, and streams of Chester County, Pennsylvania, +where an intimate knowledge of birds was added to that of batrachians, +reptiles, and insects. He showed a particular fondness for snakes. One +of these excursions, taken at the age of nineteen, is described in a +letter to his cousin (dated June 24, 1859), in which, at the close of a +charming description of the botany of the region, appears his discovery +of a new type: + + I traced the stream for a very considerable distance upon the rocky + hillside, my admiration never ceasing, but I finally turned off into + the woods towards some towering rocks. Here I actually got to + searching for salamanders and was rewarded by capturing two specimens + of species which I never saw before alive. The first (_Spelerpes + longicauda_) is a great rarity here. I am doubtful of its having been + previously noted in Chester County. Its length is 6 inches, of which + its tail forms nearly four. The color is deep brownish yellow thickly + spotted with black, which becomes confluent on the tail, thus forming + bands. To me a very interesting animal—the type of the genus + _Spelerpes_, and consequently of the subfamily _Spelerpinæ_, which I + attempted to characterize in a paper published in the _Proceedings of + the Academy of Natural Sciences_. I send thee a copy, with the request + that thee will neither mention nor show it,[10] for—however trifling—I + would doubtless be miserably annoyed by some if thee should. Nobody in + this country (or in Europe, of _ours_) knows anything about + salamanders, but Professor Baird and thy humble coz., that is, in some + respects. Rusconi, the only man who has observed their method of + reproduction, has written enough to excite greatly one’s curiosity and + not fully satisfy it. With suitable appliances of aquariums, etc., I + should like to make some observations. The other salamander I caught + was _Plethodon glutinosum_—the young—remarkable for the great number + of teeth that lie together in two patches on the “basisphenoid” bone; + about 300 or more. + +Another passage gives an insight into his strong opinion, so often +expressed afterward, as to what constitutes the real pleasures of life: + + Pleasant it is, too, to find one whose admiration of nature and detail + is heightened, not chilled, by the necessary “investigation”—which, in + my humble opinion, is one of the most useful as well as pleasing + exercises of the intellect, in the circle of human study. How many are + there who are delighted with a “fine view,” but who seldom care to + think of the mighty and mysterious agency that reared the hills, of + the wonderful structure and growth of the forests that crown them, or + of the complicated mechanism of the myriads of higher organisms that + abound everywhere; who would see but little interesting in a fungus, + and who would shrink with affected horror from a defenseless toad. + +Having passed six summers among the woods and streams of Chester County, +Pennsylvania, it is not surprising to find him, at the time this letter +was written, perfectly familiar with the plants, birds, snakes, and +salamanders of eastern Pennsylvania, and perfectly aware of the rarity +of such knowledge. His range extended with astonishing rapidity; first +among the living reptiles and amphibians; then among living and +palæozoic fishes; then among the great extinct reptiles of New Jersey +and the Rocky Mountains; finally among the ancient American quadrupeds. +He acquired in turn a masterly knowledge of each type. Irreverent toward +old systems, eager and ambitious to replace them by new ones of his own, +with unbounded powers of hard work, whether in the field or at his desk, +he rapidly became a leading spirit among the workers in the great realm +of the backboned creation, both in America and Europe. While inferior in +logic, he showed Huxley’s unerring vision of the most distinctive +feature in a group of animals, as well as the broad grasp of Cuvier and +of Cuvier’s famous English disciple, Owen. While most men of our day are +able to specialize among the details of an order, or at most of a class, +Cope, at the age of thirty-four, had in his mental horizon at once the +five great classes, although since Owen’s time they had been greatly +expanded by palæontological discovery. He was thus the last and most +distinguished representative of the old school of comparative +anatomists. His high pressure of thirty-eight years’ work was not +consistent with excelling accuracy. We have often to look behind the +returns in using Cope’s work. Yet if it lacks German exactness, French +beauty of presentation, and the solidity which marks the best English +scientific workmanship, its dominant principles are sound and its chief +anatomical generalizations will endure longer than those of either Owen +or Cuvier. + +With this peculiar fitness for great studies came first the glorious +opportunity of entering the unknown western field as a pioneer with +Marsh and Leidy. In 1866 he was the first to find along the New Jersey +coast remains of the leaping dinosaur, _Lælaps aquilunguis_, and he +anticipated Huxley in comparing these reptiles with the birds. In 1871 +he extended his explorations westward into what is now the most arid +portion of Kansas, among the remains of the ancient marine monsters, the +ram-nosed mosasaur and the sea-serpent, or elasmosaur. Following up the +rapid advance of government exploration in the Rocky Mountains between +1872 and 1878, he discovered in New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming the +great amphicœlias, the gigantic camarasaurus, and the frill-necked +dinosaur agathaumas. As a pioneer in exploration among these giant +animals he was obliged to draw his conclusions largely from fragmentary +and imperfect materials, leaving the field open to Professor Marsh’s +more exhaustive explorations, which were supported by the government. +Yet Professor Cope illuminated the incomplete fragments with his +reasoning and his fertile imagination. When a bone came into his hands, +his first step was to turn it over and over, to comprehend its form +thoroughly, and to compare it with its nearest ally, then to throw out a +conjecture as to its uses and its relation to the life economy of the +animal as a whole. One often found him virtually living in the past, +vividly picturing to himself the muddy shores of the Permian seas of +Texas, where the fin-back lizards basked, or the great fresh-water +expanses of Wyoming and Montana, where the dinosaurs wandered. His +conclusions as to the habits and modes of locomotion of these animals, +often so grotesque as to excite laughter, were suggestive revivals from +the vast deeps of time of the muscular and nervous life which once +impelled the mighty bones. It is fortunate that some of this imaginative +history has been written down by Mr. Ballou and that, although +physically enfeebled by a mortal illness, Professor Cope in his last +days was able to convey to Mr. Knight, the artist, his impressions of +how these ancient saurians lived and moved. + +The second feature of his opportunity was, of course, that this pioneer +exploration came early in the age of Darwinism, when missing links, not +only in human ancestry, but in the greater chain of backboned animals, +were at the highest premium. Thus he was fortunate in recording the +discovery in northwestern New Mexico of by far the oldest quadrupeds +known, in finding among these the most venerable monkey, in describing +to the world hundreds of links—in fact, whole chains—of descent between +the most ancient quadrupeds and what we please to call the higher types, +especially the horses, camels, tapirs, dogs, and cats. He labored +successfully to connect the reptiles with the amphibians and the latter +with the fishes, and was as quick as a flash to detect in the paper of +another author the oversight of some long-sought link which he had been +awaiting. Thus in losing him we have lost our ablest and most discerning +critic. No one has made such profuse and overwhelming demonstration of +the actual historical working of the laws of evolution, his popular +reputation perhaps resting most widely upon his practical and +speculative studies in evolution. + +Many friends in this country and abroad have spoken of the invigorating +nature of his companionship. A life of intense activity, harassed for +long periods by many difficulties and obstacles, many of them of his own +making, was nevertheless wholly without worry, that destroyer of the +mind so common in our country. His half-century’s enjoyment of research, +extending from his seventh to his fifty-seventh year, can only be +described in its effects upon him as buoyant; it lifted him far above +disturbance by the ordinary matters of life, above considerations of +physical comfort and material welfare, and animated him with a serene +confidence in the rewards which Science extends to her votaries. He +exemplified the truth of the words which Peacock puts into the +meditation of Asterius: + + ... while science moves on in the calm dignity of its course, + affording to youth delights equally pure and vivid—to maturity, calm + and grateful occupation—to old age, the most pleasing recollections + and inexhaustible materials of agreeable and salutary reflection; and + while its votary enjoys the disinterested pleasure of enlarging the + intellect and increasing the comforts of society, he is himself + independent of the caprices of human intercourse and the accidents of + human fortune. Nature is his great and inexhaustible treasure. His + days are always too short for his enjoyment; ennui is a stranger to + his door. At peace with the world and with his own mind, he suffices + to himself, makes all around him happy, and the close of his pleasing + and beneficial existence is the evening of a beautiful day. + +While working at Cope’s museum-residence at Philadelphia, I have had +many queer experiences in the odd, half-Bohemian restaurants which the +naturalist frequented. The quality of the meal was a secondary +consideration to him, provided it afforded sufficient brain fuel. While +eating he always relaxed into pure fun and displayed a large fund of +amusing anecdotes of the experiences, mishaps, and frailties of +scientists, his own as often as those of others. He worked deliberately +and gave his whole mind to one subject at a time, if he considered it of +special importance, this power being aided by his remarkable memory of +species and of objects long laid aside for future reference. In his +field exploration his scientific enthusiasm burned still higher in +pursuit of an unknown type or a missing link. Neither horses nor men +could keep pace with his indefatigable energy. Heat and alkali-water +were totally disregarded. From one of his Bitter Creek Desert trips he +returned to Fort Bridger completely exhausted and for weeks was +prostrated with fever. Only a short time before his death he laughingly +related that after a solemn warning by a physician to avoid horse-back +riding and exposure to water, his health had been greatly improved in +the course of a summer by three hundred miles’ exercise in the saddle in +North Dakota and several weeks’ wading in New Jersey swamps. His house +in Pine Street became every year a greater curiosity as the accumulating +fossils, books, and pamphlets outtaxed the shelves and began to thicken +like stratified deposits upon the floor in dust-laden walls and lanes. +Even his sleeping-room was piled to the ceiling, and he closed his eyes +for the last time while lying upon a bed surrounded on three sides by +the loved objects of his life-work. + +The most conspicuous feature of Cope’s character from boyhood upward was +independence; this was partly the secret of his venturesome and +successful assaults upon all traditional but defective systems of +classification. Seldom has a face reflected a character more fully than +that of Professor Cope. His square and prominent forehead suggested his +vigorous intellect and marvelous memory; his brilliant eyes were the +media of exceptional keenness of observation; his prominent chin was in +traditional harmony with his aggressive spirit. From this rare +combination of qualities so essential to free investigation sprang his +scientific genius, and, with exceptional facilities of wealth and +culture in his early education, he became a great naturalist—certainly +the greatest America has produced. + +As a comparative anatomist he ranks both in the range and effectiveness +of knowledge and ideas with Cuvier and Owen. When we consider the short +life of some of the favorite generalizations of these great men he may +well prove to be their superior as a philosophical anatomist. His work, +while inferior in style of presentation, has another quality, which +distinguishes that of Huxley, namely, its clear and immediate perception +of the most essential or distinctive features in a group of animals. As +a natural philosopher, while far less logical than Huxley, he was more +creative and constructive, his metaphysics ending in theism rather than +in agnosticism. + +Cope is not to be thought of merely as a specialist. After Huxley he was +the last representative of the old broad-gauge school of anatomists, and +he is only to be compared with members of that school. His life-work +bears the marks of great genius, of solid and accurate observation as +well as of inaccuracy due to bad logic or haste and overpressure of +work. Although the greater number of his Natural Orders and Natural Laws +will remain as permanent landmarks in our science, a large part of his +systematic work will require laborious revision and thus is far from +standing as a model to the young zoologist. + +Appreciation of greatness is a mark of the civilization and culture of a +people. Cope’s monumental work, preserved in thousands of notes, short +papers, and memoirs, and in three bulky government quartos, constitutes +his assurance of enduring fame. Some of his countrymen, and even of his +fellow workers, allowed certain of his characteristics to obscure his +stronger side in their estimate of him and his work, and during his life +he received few of the honors such as foreigners are wont to bestow upon +their countrymen of note. When we think more deeply of what really +underlies human progress, we realize that only to a few men with the +light of genius is it given to push the world’s human thought along, and +that Edward Drinker Cope was one of these men. + +[Illustration: + + _From a photograph copyright by Underwood and Underwood_ + + THEODORE ROOSEVELT +] + + + + + THEODORE ROOSEVELT + 1858–1919 + + In his early life Roosevelt was a warm friend and companion of my + naturalist brother, Frederick. During the last ten years of his life I + became very intimate with him, especially after the writing of my “Age + of Mammals” in 1910, which he read with ardor. Recalling his + experiences as Police Commissioner of the City of New York, in writing + to me of this book he said he enjoyed comparing certain politicians + with whom he was thrown with the hyænodons and certain less desirable + animal citizens of the Tertiary age! It was perhaps this running + parallel between human nature and animal nature which grew on his mind + and caused him to seek my advice when invited to prepare and deliver + the Romanes Lecture at Oxford, which he entitled “Biological Analogies + in History.” He was more kinds of a man than any one I have ever + known—that is, able in more lines. + + In this “Impression” I endeavor to show that the scientific side of + Roosevelt’s life is to be taken seriously; that he had unusual ability + as a naturalist and observer, which would have led to a distinguished + career in science had he not been turned to government. Above all + things he desired to be truthful and strictly accurate, and he took + infinite pains not to exaggerate but to present the real facts. + + + THEODORE ROOSEVELT + NATURALIST + + “Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.” + —ROOSEVELT. + +Theodore Roosevelt doubtless inherited his natural history bent from his +father, who was a founder of the American Museum of Natural History in +the year 1869. I had the good fortune to recall young Theodore in his +boyhood, because of no life may it more truly be said that “the child is +father of the man.” He was one of a youthful band of bird-lovers, +observers and collectors, among whom was my brother Frederick, who came +together in the seventies. While Frederick confined himself to birds, +Theodore was interested also in mammals and small amphibians, and he +came back from their collecting trips with all kinds of specimens. +Frederick invited Theodore to collect birds with him in the forests of +the Hudson River highlands, and on one occasion, when every pocket was +full of specimens, Theodore suddenly discovered what he believed to be a +new species of frog. Having no other place for it, he put it on top of +his head and clapped on his hat. Things went very well until the boys +happened to meet the Honorable Hamilton Fish, then Secretary of State, +taking his dignified afternoon drive along the Hudson with Mrs. Fish. Of +course both boys doffed their hats, whereupon Theodore’s frog, tired of +confinement, made a spring forward! That the youthful collector +recovered and replaced the frog as soon as the Secretary’s carriage was +out of sight illustrates one of Roosevelt’s great characteristics as a +naturalist—to collect at all hazards, at any amount of personal +inconvenience. Like the young Darwin, who brought back a species of bug +in his mouth because he had no more space in his pocket, the boy +Roosevelt never let an opportunity pass and finally became one of the +greatest of American collectors. In a letter to me dated December 9, +1914, he wrote: + + My memory is that I was one of the group who founded the Linnæan + Society, although it was then a very small society and my part was + humble and inconspicuous. As a boy I worked in the museum and + specifically remember skinning some rather reddish white-footed mice + which I thought were golden mice and was much disappointed to find + that they were not. Fred and I worked under Bell and sometimes visited + the museum together and did work there. Bell’s shop was down town on + Broadway. I remember very well once being allowed to look over a large + number of South American mice in the museum when I was a small boy and + appealing to Mr. Bickmore to know how I could get at the relationship + of the South American mice with our northern mice of the same family. + Fred and I did much about the same kind of work but I was much more + interested than he was in the book part of it. + +Roosevelt’s boyish collection of birds led to his initial training under +Bell, a well-known taxidermist of New York at that time, and, still more +unusual, to his discovery of a new species of bird and the preparation +of his first scientific paper describing it.[11] This illustrates +another characteristic, which is lacking in many naturalists, namely, +the desire to publish as promptly as possible and to lose not a precious +moment of time in getting ready for the next publication. This +characteristic finally made Theodore Roosevelt a voluminous writer on +natural history in the last two decades of his life. During his ranching +experience he was constantly observing the western game mammals and he +made extensive contributions to our knowledge of their habits and +distribution. Birds were his first love, and by far the most thorough +knowledge which he displayed was in the field of ornithology; he knew +not only the birds and their songs but also all their scientific names. +Lord Grey, in an address to the Harvard students, verified this +statement of Roosevelt’s unusual knowledge of birds, British as well as +American. Walking through the New Forest together they observed upward +of thirty species of birds, each of which Theodore Roosevelt knew by +familiar and scientific name, recognizing many of them by what he had +read of their songs. + +Among extinct animals, in which I am especially interested, Roosevelt +was not an original observer, but he was a voracious reader of +everything worth while written about them and soon became extremely well +informed. In this connection I recall an amusing and characteristic +incident. Receiving an invitation to deliver one of the Romanes Lectures +at Oxford—perhaps the greatest lectureship of the kind in the +world—Roosevelt wrote to me, as follows, for advice as to whether he +could do it and should do it: + + I have just received from Lord Curzon, the Chancellor of Oxford, a + request to deliver the Romanes Lecture at any time I see fit. I shall + probably accept for the spring that I get out of Africa on my way back + to the United States. It seems to me worth while for me to do so. + Doesn’t it seem so to you? It is a lecture which has been delivered by + Gladstone, Huxley, John Morley, Bryce, and other men of that stamp. + +I replied in the affirmative on both questions and he immediately wrote +back that he would prepare the lecture on condition that I would read it +over and make corrections, since it was my peculiar field of work. At +that time he was President of the United States, nearing the end of his +term and engaged in a tremendous struggle with both the Senate and the +House, on which for the time he had apparently lost his hold. This +political preoccupation, however, did not prevent his preparing three +very important addresses which he had been asked to deliver, in Berlin, +in Paris, and that above mentioned in Oxford. + +In a relatively short time I received the manuscript of his Romanes +Lecture. It was full of analogies between the extinct animal kingdom and +the kingdoms and principalities of the human world, in which he compared +one moribund government in Europe to the _Megatherium_ and another that +had ceased to progress about three centuries ago to the _Glyptodon_! I +drew heavy blue pencil lines across these pages, with the word “omit” in +the margin, and wrote: “I have left out certain passages that are likely +to bring on war between the United States and the governments referred +to.” It developed later that the expurgated passages were quite dear to +the author, but in keeping with his character he thanked me warmly and +assured me that + + I have profited by your advice to at once change what I said about the + Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish, and I think I now have it so that no + legitimate offense can be taken. But you rather frighten me by + speaking of the importance which you say will be attached to my + speech. I am speaking purely as a layman and as a private citizen, and + when I accepted the invitation it never occurred to me that any more + importance would be attached to what I said than, for instance, to + what Curzon or Bryce said in their lectures. + +Shortly afterward, at a White House luncheon, I was surprised when +President Roosevelt informed the entire table that I had been reviewing +his Romanes Lecture and softening some of his favorite war-provoking +passages. I had already read the manuscript twice, but I told him I +would be glad to look it over again. I shall never forget his reply; +with a broad sweep of his hand, ending with his fist on the luncheon +table, he said: + + No, I am not going to touch that lecture again. I shall put it away, + send it to London, and entirely dismiss it from my mind until I take + the train for Oxford—that Romanes Lecture is finished! + +He kept this resolution and instead of taking the manuscript of his +three great European addresses with him, as other authors would have +done, he went to Africa with only the Dark Continent in his mind. This +was one of the secrets of his extraordinary success, namely, his power +to concentrate all his thought and energy for the time being on a single +object. + +Some years after Roosevelt’s return from Africa and his triumphal tour +of Europe, including the reception at Oxford, in conversation with the +Archbishop of York our talk turned on Theodore Roosevelt and this +Romanes Lecture of 1910. Said His Grace: “I heard Roosevelt, and in the +way of grading which we have at Oxford we agreed to mark the lecture +‘beta minus’ but the lecturer ‘alpha plus.’ While we felt that the +lecture was not a very great contribution to science we were sure that +the lecturer was a very great man, to be ranked in the plus A class. +After the lecture Colonel Roosevelt asked me how I liked it. I may have +expressed rather qualified admiration and seeing my hesitation he said: +‘Well, that lecture would have been a great deal stronger had not one of +my scientific friends in America _blue-penciled the best part of it_.’” + +While perhaps strongest in his knowledge of birds, Theodore Roosevelt +also gained an extraordinary knowledge of mammals, especially of North +America and of Africa. In preparing for his African trip he called upon +me for all the books I could supply from the Osborn Library in the +American Museum, which in many respects is one of the most complete in +the country, if not in the world. For several weeks he consumed five +books a week, sitting up to the small hours of the morning to complete +his reading or until Mrs. Roosevelt insisted upon his retiring. Thus in +the course of a few weeks he had read all that had been written about +the great mammals of Africa from Sclater to Selous. He read so rapidly +that it did not seem possible that he could absorb it all, yet when we +gathered at Sagamore Hill to talk over his expedition—a group of the +very best naturalists familiar with African life whom he could get +together for luncheon—he displayed a knowledge of the genera and species +and of the precise localities where each might be found which was equal +or superior to that of any man in the room. To cite only one instance of +his marvelous memory and of his thoroughness of preparation: a question +arose as to the locality of a particular subspecies, Grevy’s zebra +(_Equus grevyi foai_). Roosevelt went to the map, pointed out directly +the particular and only spot where it could be found and said that he +thought the expedition could not possibly get down in that direction. + +Equipped with this knowledge and aided by three or four exceptional men +like Heller and Akeley, he conducted, under the auspices of the +Smithsonian Institution, by far the most successful expedition that has +ever penetrated Africa, the chief collections from which are now housed +in our National Museum in Washington, a few fine specimens coming to the +American Museum. Not content with his magazine articles in _Scribner’s_ +about the African trip, Roosevelt set to work with Heller and wrote one +of the finest books we have, “African Game Trails,” a volume replete +from cover to cover with accurate, original information—in fact, a real +contribution. + +Roosevelt’s return from Africa and triumphal progress through Germany, +France, and England, which reached a climax in the boisterous welcome he +received in the avenues of New York, left his personality utterly +untouched by a trace of vanity. A few days afterward, at a very quiet +lunch at the Museum, I spoke of the great opportunity afforded by the +detachment of his life in Africa to gain a true perspective of his life +and career, such as it is impossible to gain in the crowded conditions +of the modern world. I shall always remember his gesture and reply. +Partly raising his hands in front of his face, as if to shut out the +inner vision, he said, “I never want to look at or think about myself.” + +In the many conversations and conferences which we enjoyed together and +in the correspondence of the succeeding years, the impression which +Roosevelt made upon me was one of innate modesty, of full consciousness +of the limitations of his powers and of sincere deference to the +opinions of more experienced men, especially in his own beloved field of +natural history. The same desire to be accurate and to be right +displayed in the preparation of his Romanes Lecture reappeared from time +to time in the submission of his opinions and theories to other +naturalists. + +Perhaps the finest illustration of his lack of self-deception came out +in a private testimonial dinner given him by his friend Robert Collier. +The dinner was by far the most brilliant one of the kind I have ever +attended; the guests came from various parts of the country and included +only his warm personal friends and admirers. When it came Roosevelt’s +turn to speak he leaned forward, resting both closed hands on the table +after the manner of Clemenceau, and spoke very quietly, with the utmost +simplicity and directness, expressing with brief candor his own feelings +regarding his reception abroad and at home. Briefly rehearsing his +experiences abroad, he said that he was far more gratified by his +reception at home and welcome to America than by any of the acclamation +he had received abroad. Then, lowering his voice and his head, he +continued: + + But, my friends—you all are my friends—I am not deceived for one + moment. I know the American people; they have a way of erecting a + triumphal arch, and after the Conquering Hero has passed beneath it he + may expect to receive a shower of bricks on his back at any moment! + Yes, my friends, I am having a bully time. I am swimming on the very + crest of the wave and enjoying it immensely, but I am not for a moment + deceived; next week or next month I may be again in the trough of the + wave, but I assure you I shall be swimming just as hard and enjoying + life just as much as I now am. + +None of his friends at that time believed that such a prophecy could +possibly be realized, yet it came true with amazing suddenness. Within a +few weeks his name had apparently left the headlines for good; it +appeared only in small type in brief paragraphs on inside pages. To the +superficial observer, to those who did not know the real Roosevelt and +his powers of resilience his career was ended. + +The lull in publicity gave him the quiet he needed to devote to three +volumes of natural history and to prepare for his last and altogether +greatest period of exploration. His manifold ability and the marked +characteristics of his multiple personality came out in the course of +his plans for the great expedition to South America projected in the +spring of 1913 and executed between October, 1913, and June, 1914. He +had selected an unknown and particularly dangerous region, where the +native tribes had never been thoroughly subdued by the Brazilian +government. He marked out this region as his first choice for a South +American expedition. I sent word to him through our mutual friend, Frank +M. Chapman, that I would never consent to his going to this particular +region under the American Museum flag, that I would not assume even part +of the responsibility for his entering such a dangerous country and not +returning alive. With a smile he sent back to me through Chapman a +characteristic reply: + + Tell Osborn I have already lived and enjoyed as much of life as any + nine other men I know; I have had my full share, and if it is + necessary for me to leave my bones in South America, I am quite ready + to do so. + +Although more prudent plans prevailed and we finally determined upon a +route which resulted in the discovery of the Rio Roosevelt, yet the +exposure, the excessively moist climate, the dearth of food, clothing +and supplies, and the malarial infection very nearly cost Roosevelt his +life. There is no doubt that the hazard of the trip meant nothing to +him. While never reckless, he was absolutely fearless. His plans were +made with the utmost intelligence and thoroughness, and with the trained +assistance of his son Kermit, the South American experience and stalwart +courage of George K. Cherrie, and the devoted companionship of Colonel +Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon and Leo E. Miller, he led the most +important expedition that has ever gone from North into South America. +As a result of this expedition through Paraguay and the wilderness of +Brazil more than 450 mammal and 1375 bird specimens were added to the +American Museum collections, in addition to the geographic results, +which aroused such a chorus of discussion and diversity of opinion. +Roosevelt was so impressed with the importance of continuing the +exploration that on his return he personally contributed two thousand +dollars from his literary earnings to send his companion naturalists +back to the field. + +An American statesman, who should have known better, once characterized +Roosevelt as “one who knew a little about more things than any one else +in this country.” This gives an entirely false impression of Roosevelt’s +mind, which was of quite the contrary order. What Roosevelt did know in +history and in natural history he knew thoroughly; he went to the very +bottom of things, if possible, and no one was more conscientious than he +where his knowledge was limited or merely that of the intelligent +layman. His thorough research in preparing for the African and South +American expeditions was not that of the amateur or of the sportsman but +of the trained naturalist who desires to learn as much as possible from +previous students and explorers. + +The State of New York will erect a splendid memorial to Theodore +Roosevelt the Naturalist and Explorer which will perpetuate the +idealistic and courageous aspects of his character and life as a +naturalist. It will adjoin the American Museum of Natural History, which +he loved and which inspired him to the activities of his youth and his +mature years, where he sought the companionship of men of kindred +ambitions and to which he repaired, in the intervals of politics and of +pressing duties of every kind, for keen and concentrated discussions on +animal coloration, the geographic distribution of mammals and birds, the +history of human races, evolution of special groups of animals, and the +furtherance of his expeditions. The memorial will remind boys and girls +of all generations of Americans of Theodore Roosevelt’s spirit of +self-effacement, of love, of zeal, of fearlessness, of energy, of +intelligence with which they should approach nature in all of its +wonderful aspects. + +[Illustration: + + JOHN BURROUGHS—JUNE, 1896 +] + + + + + THE TWO JOHNS + + JOHN BURROUGHS + 1837–1919 + + JOHN MUIR + 1838–1914 + + “The two Johns,” as they were affectionately known by their comrades + on the Harriman Expedition to Alaska, were alike in their Christian + names, in their love of nature, and, to a certain extent, in their + powers of expression, but they were profoundly different in every + other respect. I had the privilege of knowing John Muir much more + intimately than I knew John Burroughs. I learned through + correspondence and through long and intimate conversations thoroughly + to understand his Scotch soul, which had a strong Norse element in it + and a moral fervor drawn from the Bible of the Covenanters. It is + interesting to contrast this Scotch type of soul with the English type + of soul seen in John Burroughs. + + I had in mind for some time this idea of the racial soul as something + more profound in its influence than either the racial temperament or + the racial mind. If the body had a long history in the past, so has + the soul of man. In reading Wordsworth’s noble “Ode on the Intimations + of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,” it flashed + across my mind that along an entirely different path I had reached the + same conclusion as Wordsworth: namely, that the human soul is full of + reminiscences and that it responds to conditions and experiences long + bygone. + + + THE RACIAL SOUL OF JOHN BURROUGHS + +Indelibly stamped on my mind is the celebration of John Burroughs’s +seventy-fifth birthday in the Bird Hall of the American Museum of +Natural History, when six hundred children of the New York East Side +schools, Czechs, Hungarians, Poles, Slovaks, no trace of American stock +among them, came to tell Burroughs how they loved him and his writings. +Twelve bright girls and boys, each representing a volume of the edition +of his collected works and wearing the name of the volume suspended in +front, came forward and recited a verse or a bit of prose from the +volume represented. Tears came into the eyes of “the good gray poet,” +Burroughs’s own designation of Walt Whitman, as the love and admiration +of the spirited children poured in upon him. The scene reflected the +high purpose of literature, the interpretation of the spiritual and +moral influences of nature. + +With a large following of grown men, a circle of admirers which included +such extremes as Henry Ford and Theodore Roosevelt, Burroughs was +preeminently the poet of the school children of America, his ability for +humanizing his dumb friends of the animal world having caught the fancy +of the children, thus giving him one of his claims to immortality in +America, if not in other countries. It was his part in America to throw +the light of nature into the “prison-house,” to use Wordsworth’s phrase, +which civilization throws around our youth: + + Heaven lies about us in our infancy! + Shades of the prison-house begin to close + Upon the growing Boy, + But He beholds the light, and whence it flows, + He sees it in his joy; + The Youth, who daily farther from the east + Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest, + And by the vision splendid + Is on his way attended; + At length the Man perceives it die away, + And fade into the light of common day. + +His fellow poet of nature, John Muir, though in his way a writer of +large imagination, did not humanize his birds and mammals as Burroughs +did—a legitimate means of charming young and old with the habits and +moralities of animal life, provided one makes it clear that it is an +interpretation and an analogy and not a real resemblance being pictured. +Burroughs loved nature of the East—of New York and New England—as Muir, +his junior by only a year, cast over us the spell of the Pacific Coast, +from Alaska to southern California, in all its virgin grandeur. On the +voyages to Alaska in 1899 “the two Johns,” as they were affectionately +called by their companions, met day by day. Alike in their disregard of +conventions, in absent-mindedness in such trivial matters as clothing +and food, and in their readiness to absorb and to pour out their +nature-philosophy, it would appear that one steamer was not quite large +enough for two such great men, accustomed as each was, in his advancing +years, to unchecked discourse and to reverent attention and interest! + +In my intimacy with Muir I learned that his views did not entirely +harmonize with those of Burroughs; the difference was more or less +traceable, I believe, to the Scotch ancestry of Muir and to his severe +and rugged bringing up as contrasted with the more equable environment +of Burroughs’s youth. Muir chose for observation those aspects of nature +which present the greatest obstacles, glaciers and mountain tops, +although he had tender moments with birds and found a personality in +trees. He wrote about trees as has no one else in the whole history of +trees, chiefly because he loved them as he loved men and women, and his +powers of expression were gathered from classic British sources, such as +the King James version of the Bible, Milton, Shakespeare, and Carlyle, +with little influence from Thoreau and none from Whitman. + +In feature and in spirit of the Nordic stock, with a dash of Celtic +temperament, Burroughs was true to his heredity. From the paternal side +of his ancestry Burroughs received, according to a close student of his +forebears, his religious and moral nature, his stubbornness, his +persistence, his emotional tendencies, his love of beauty, his curiosity +as to causes and explanations; these were the Nordic traits of his +pedigree. Of English ancestry on his mother’s side, he inherited from +the Kelly line, perhaps Celtic, his slight melancholy and his care-free +love of nature. There are numerous divines on the paternal Burroughs +side, given to Bible reading; on the maternal Kelly side are country +folk, lovers of the outdoors, fishermen, foxhunters, one hermit, and one +Bible reader, “Granther Kelly.” Thus Burroughs’s intellectual and +spiritual pedigree recalls what Goethe says of his own parents: + + To my father I owe my stature, + My impulse to the serious life; + To my mother dear my joyous nature, + My love of story-telling. + +At various times in Burroughs’s life one set of impulses and then +another predominated, but his genius manifested itself in three ways: +first, in the possession of what may be called the _nature supersense_, +a rare endowment observed also in Wordsworth, Thoreau, and Emerson, and +recorded by them in some of their most beautiful sentences: + + This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and + imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange + liberty in nature, a part of itself. (Thoreau: “Walden.”) + + ... We have crept out of our close and crowded houses into the night + and morning, and we see what majestic beauties daily wrap us in their + bosom. How willingly we would escape the barriers which render them + comparatively impotent, escape the sophistication and second thought, + and suffer nature to entrance us.... These enchantments are medicinal, + they sober and heal us. (Emerson: “Nature.”) + + Mounting toward the upland again, I pause reverently as the hush and + stillness of twilight come upon the woods. It is the sweetest, ripest + hour of the day. And as the hermit’s evening hymn goes up from the + deep solitude below me, I experience that serene exaltation of + sentiment of which music, literature, and religion are but the faint + types and symbols. (Burroughs: “In the Hemlocks.”) + +Of the reality of this nature supersense there is as little doubt as of +its rarity. + +Burroughs may be called a natural philosopher—a nature-lover more than a +naturalist, for the latter term is reserved for the few gifted ones, +like Darwin and Fabre. His powers of original observation of nature were +not great powers such as would entitle him to be called a great +naturalist, but powers of intimate, truthful, and sympathetic +observation joined with a love of expression that made him a prolific +producer, and that suggested the title of his first paper, “Expression,” +published in 1860. The naturalist instinct has certainly been rare among +other poets and men of letters. Emerson’s “Nature,” published in 1835, +might have been written at his library table, gazing into the firelight, +although his poems, “May-Day,” “To the Humble Bee,” “The Rhodora,” and +“Titmouse,” are full of the nature vision. Maeterlinck’s delightful +naturalistic writings are rather the mastery of the observations of +Fabre than of a single original observation on his own part. Similarly, +the natural philosophy so beautifully expressed by Tennyson in 1850 in +his “In Memoriam” was drawn from conversations in a Darwinian club. +Wordsworth was richly endowed with the nature supersense, perhaps more +so than Burroughs, but he was neither observer, naturalist, nor natural +philosopher; he was preeminently the spiritual interpreter. On the other +hand, the naturalistic poetry of Erasmus Darwin at the end of the +eighteenth century, his “Botanic Garden,” his “Loves of the Plants,” +were the rhythmic expression of original and philosophical thought of a +high order. This is true also of Goethe’s natural history writings and +poetic allusions to nature which sprang from original work in botany and +anatomy and brought him near a conception of the theory of evolution a +half-century before Charles Darwin. + +We look to Gilbert White as one of Burroughs’s prototypes in the union +of observation and expression, to Izaak Walton in the joy of outdoor +life, and especially to the truly great Americans, Thoreau and Walt +Whitman. That Burroughs fell under Whitman’s influence very early, his +poem “Waiting,” written at the age of twenty-five, would seem to +indicate. + +My own attention, at the age of twenty-two, was called to Whitman in a +memorable manner, when he was not considered fit reading for the young. +It was in 1879, in the rooms of Francis Balfour, younger brother of +Arthur, at Cambridge University, where there were weekly dinners at +which one met wits and celebrities from London and Oxford, as well as +from Cambridge. One evening I was approached by a tall youth with a +handsome face, long hair, flowing collar, and sensuous mouth, who began +immediately to offer an opinion of American literature. He said: “You +have no real poets in America. To me Longfellow, Whittier, and the +others are mere echoes of English singers. You Americans have only one +sweet and true songster, whom you do not appreciate, and that is Walt +Whitman.” These words and young Oscar Wilde’s appearance are indelibly +impressed upon my memory because they first brought home to me the idea +that the all-essential quality in a writer of eminence is that he must +be of his country, of his soil. This quality, preeminent in Whitman, was +possessed in no less degree by Burroughs, although Burroughs was by no +means so poetic. Americanism in Americans is essential for the +fundamental biological reason that our spiritual and intellectual +powers, to reach their highest development, must react to our own +environment and not to some other distant or bygone environment. Welcome +as British, French, or classical reactions may be among us, they are not +of our soil. + +These are interpretations of Burroughs’s genius, not explanations; we +may examine and compare him with other men, but we cannot explain him +any more than we can explain the prehistoric artists of the cave period. +In each case the genius arrives, assumes leadership, and lifts an entire +community of less gifted souls to a little higher level. + +This brings us to the sources of the racial soul. Why did the soul of +John Burroughs react throughout his life to the genial conditions of our +East, to its birds and plants and flowers, to its seasons, to its few +retreats still accessible where Nature has preserved some of her +unrestrained beauty in her contest with the ruthless destroyer that we +call Civilization? Why was he the poet of our robins, of our +apple-trees, of the beauties of our forests and farms? Why was he the +ardent and sometimes violent prophet of conservation? + +Whence the poet’s soul, whence the soul of a race, of a people, of a +nation? Have we not reason to believe that there is _a racial soul_ as +well as a racial mind, a racial system of morals, a racial anatomy? This +is the thought to which I have been led in trying to penetrate to the +inner meaning of the life and works of John Burroughs, because, eager as +I am about anatomy, I am far more eager about the origin and development +of the moral, spiritual, and intellectual nature of man—the mystery of +mysteries in biology at the present time. When Huxley in his Romanes +Lecture held that Darwinism fails to throw light on the moral nature of +man, he was, in my opinion, wrong; yet the origin of the anatomy and +even of the moral nature of man is relatively simple when compared with +the origin of the spirit and mind of man. The peculiar mystery about the +origin of our spiritual and intellectual powers is that they appear to +arise before they are needed—they are ready to play their part before +the time and opportunity arise. + +Moreover, we have long since abandoned Herbert Spencer’s teaching that +our spiritual and intellectual faculties are developed through the +inherited effects of use, and we now adhere to Weismann’s teaching that +the use or disuse of our spiritual and intellectual powers has no effect +whatever on our offspring, except in so far as it tends to keep us in a +normal state of mind and health. The death-blow to Herbert Spencer’s +view was given in the discoveries of prehistoric art within the last +quarter of a century, from which it appears that a race of men of +spiritual and intellectual powers arose in which the art spirit had +little to do with the struggle for existence and may have run counter to +it, as it does at the present time. These discoveries also appear to +give pause to the Darwinian theory of the origin of our spiritual and +intellectual powers through Natural Selection, for the periods in man’s +history and prehistory when the artist or the man of letters has been +best fitted to survive have been few and far between. + +Again, this sudden emergence of our spiritual and intellectual nature +from the man of the environing woods, forests, streams, plains, and +deserts of primeval Asia and Europe does not favor Bergson’s view of the +creative evolution of an internal spiritual and intellectual impulse +which must flower out in time, because if Bergson were right we should +have spiritual and intellectual genius appearing out of season and +entirely out of accord with environment. This is not the case, because +there is always an adjustment, a relation, between the internal +spiritual and intellectual powers and the external nature of the time, +the beauty or the ugliness, the ease or the hardship. It is through this +reciprocal relation of the inner man and the environing world that there +are so few misfits. If Bergson were right, our western world would be +full of disharmonies; we should find Mediterranean geniuses springing up +in Scandinavian atmospheres, as is never the case. The _racial_ creative +spirit of man always reacts to its own historic racial environment, into +the remote past. + +Our conclusion is that distinctive spiritual and intellectual powers +originate along lines of slow racial evolution in climate and +surroundings of distinct kinds. In the south were the Mediterranean +lines of migration along sunny seas, formidable enough in the winter +season, favorable to rapid development of maritime powers, together with +artistic powers, the Mycenæans, the Phœnicians, the early Italian races. +The Mediterraneans take nature for granted. In the centre of Europe were +the lines of Alpine or Celtic invaders, kept entirely away from the sea, +races of agriculturalists and of miners, rich in mechanical talent, +neither adventurous nor sea-loving. To the north lived a race of +hunters, of seafaring adventurers, resolutely contending with the forces +of nature, fond of the open, curious and inquisitive about the causes of +things; deliberate in spiritual development, very gradually they reach +the greatest intellectual heights and depths. + +The racial aptitudes in these three environments of the past twenty +thousand years are now revealed in anatomy and will be no less clearly +revealed in the predispositions of morals, of intellect, and of spirit. +Here nature, religion, and beauty, kept apart by the superficial vision +of man in science, theology, and æsthetics, are one in the eternal +vision and purpose of the Creator. In the marvelous continuity of +heredity a thousand years are as yesterday. + +This is my idea of the origin of the racial soul, this is my +interpretation of Wordsworth’s immortal lines: + + Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: + The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, + Hath had elsewhere its setting, + And cometh from afar: + Not in entire forgetfulness, + And not in utter nakedness, + But trailing clouds of glory do we come + From God, who is our home. + +Burroughs, the poet of today, found himself at home in the environment +of his remote flint-making ancestors of northern Europe. The soul that +rose with him had its setting for countless generations in the north; it +came from afar, not in forgetfulness, reflecting and recalling the +northern clouds of nature’s glory. + +[Illustration: + + JOHN MUIR +] + + + JOHN MUIR + +I believe that John Muir’s name is destined to be immortal through his +writings on mountains, forests, rivers, meadows and the sentiment of the +animal and plant life they contain. I believe that no one else has ever +lived with just the same sentiment toward trees and flowers and the +works of nature in general as that which John Muir manifested in his +life, his conversations and his writings. + +In the splendid journey which I had the privilege of taking with him to +Alaska in 1896 I first became aware of his passionate love of nature in +all its forms and his reverence for it as the direct handiwork of the +Creator. He retained from his early religious training under his father +this belief, which is so strongly expressed in the Old Testament, that +all the works of nature are directly the works of God. In this sense I +have never known any one whose nature-philosophy was more thoroughly +theistic; at the same time he was a thorough-going evolutionist and +always delighted in my own evolutionary studies, which I described to +him from time to time in the course of our journeyings and +conversations. + +It was in Alaska that he quoted the lines from Goethe’s “Wilhelm +Meister” which inspired all his travels: + + Keep not standing fixed and rooted, + Briskly venture, briskly roam; + Head and hand, where’er thou foot it, + And stout heart are still at home. + In each land the sun doth visit, + We are gay whate’er betide, + To give room for wandering is it + That the world was made so wide. + +Another sentiment of his regarding trees and flowers always impressed +me: that was his attributing to them a personality, an individuality, +such as we associate with certain human beings and animals, but rarely +with plants. To him a tree was something not only to be loved but to be +respected and revered. I well remember his intense indignation over the +proposal by his friend Charles S. Sargent to substitute the name +_Magnolia fœtida_ for _Magnolia grandiflora_ on the ground of priority. +He quoted Sargent as saying, “After all, ‘what’s in a name?’” and +himself as replying, “There is everything in the name; why inflict upon +a beautiful and defenseless plant for all time the stigma of such a name +as _Magnolia fœtida_? You yourself would not like to have your own name +changed from Charles S. Sargent to ‘the malodorous Sargent.’” + +John Muir’s incomparable literary style did not come to him easily, but +as the result of the most intense effort. I observed his methods of +writing in connection with two of his books upon which he was engaged +during the years 1911 and 1912. He came to our home on the Hudson in +June, 1911, after the Yale commencement, where he had received the +degree of LL.D. on June 21. He brought with him his new silken hood, in +which he said he had looked very grand in the commencement parade. On +Friday, June 21, he was established in Woodsome Lodge, a log cabin on a +secluded mountain height, to complete his volume on the Yosemite. Daily +he rose at 4.30 o’clock, and after a simple cup of coffee labored +incessantly on his two books, “The Yosemite” and “Boyhood and Youth.” It +was very interesting to watch how difficult it was for him. In my diary +of the time I find the following notes: “Knowing his beautiful and easy +style it is very interesting to learn how difficult it is for him; he +groans over his labors, he writes and rewrites and interpolates. He +loves the simplest English language and admires most of all Carlyle, +Emerson, and Thoreau. He is a very firm believer in Thoreau and starts +my reading deeply of this author. He also loves his Bible and is +constantly quoting it, as well as Milton and Burns. In his attitude +toward nature, as well as in his special gifts and abilities, Muir +shares many qualities with Thoreau. First among these is his mechanical +ability, his fondness for the handling of tools; second, his close +identification with nature; third, his interpretation of the religious +spirit of nature; fourth, his happiness in solitude with nature; fifth, +his lack of sympathy with crowds of people; sixth, his intense love of +animals.” Thoreau’s quiet residence at Walden is to be contrasted with +Muir’s world-wide journeyings from Scotland to Wisconsin; his penniless +journey down the Mississippi to Louisiana, Florida, across Panama, and +northward into California in its early grandeur; his establishment of +the sawmill, showing again his mechanical ability, as a means of +livelihood in the Yosemite; his climbs in the high Sierras and discovery +of still living glaciers; his eagerness to see the largest glaciers of +Alaska and his several journeys and sojourns there; his wandering all +over the great western and eastern forests of the United States; his +visits to special forests in Europe; his world tour, without +preconceived plan, including the wondrous forests of Africa, Australia, +New Zealand and Asia. Finally, his very last great journey. + +When starting out on this South American journey, from which I among +other friends tried to dissuade him, he often quoted the phrase, “I +never turn back.” Although he greatly desired to have a comrade on this +journey and often urged me to accompany him, he finally was compelled to +start out alone, quoting Milton: “I have chosen the lonely way.” On July +26 I said good-by to this very dear friend, leaving him to work on his +books and prepare for the long journey to South America, especially to +see the forests of Araucaria. I know that at this time he had little +intention of going on to Africa. It was impulse that led him from the +east coast of South America to take a long northward journey in order to +catch a steamer for the Cape of Good Hope. + +Among the personal characteristics which stand out like crystal in the +minds and hearts of his friends were his hatred of shams and his scorn +of the conventions of life, his boldness and fearlessness of attack, +well illustrated in his assault on the despoilers of the Hetch Hetchy +Valley of the Yosemite, whom he loved to characterize as “thieves and +robbers.” It was a great privilege to be associated with him in this +campaign. But certainly his chief characteristic was his intimacy with +nature and passionate love of its beauties; also, I believe, his +marvelous insight into the creative powers of nature, closely interwoven +with his deep religious sentiments and beliefs. Like John Burroughs in +many of his characteristics, in others he was totally different, and +these differences I attribute to the racial antecedents of the two men, +as studied in the “Racial Soul of John Burroughs.” + +There were published in the New York _Evening Mail_ some verses by +Charles L. Edson with which I would close this all too brief tribute: + + John o’ the mountains, wonderful John, + Is past the summit and traveling on: + The turn of the trail on the mountain side, + A smile and “Hail!” where the glaciers slide, + A streak of red where the condors ride, + And John is over the Great Divide. + + John o’ the mountains camps to-day + On a level spot by the Milky Way; + And God is telling him how He rolled + The smoking earth from the iron mold, + And hammered the mountains till they were cold, + And planted the Redwood trees of old. + + And John o’ the mountains says: “I knew, + And I wanted to grapple the hand o’ you; + And now we’re sure to be friends and chums + And camp together till chaos comes.” + +[Illustration: + + HOWARD CROSBY BUTLER +] + + + + + HOWARD CROSBY BUTLER + 1872–1922 + + Like Theodore Roosevelt, Butler was a man of many talents and each + talent was in the nature of a surprise to his friends. Under his + extremely quiet and gentle personality lay force of idealism and of + resolution, of courage and persistence which led him to great heights + as investigator, teacher, and explorer. It is in respect to this last + talent only that this “Impression” is written, because I spoke in the + memorial service at Graduate College with others who dwelt on his + other talents. As an archæological explorer Butler showed his + resourcefulness and powers of command in the most remarkable way. + Bedouins, Arabs, native Turks yielded to his quiet and persuasive + power, though he rarely raised his voice above a low monotone. Again + we turn to the language of Dante and of Homer to express appreciation + of this great man. + + + HOWARD CROSBY BUTLER, EXPLORER + +In the “Divine Comedy,” Dante speaks of Ulysses, of exploration of the +western seas and lands, of braving dangers, of overcoming obstacles, of +offering home, family, friends, life itself, in the quest of the great +unknown, its wonders, its beauties, its riches. + + “O brothers!” I began, “who to the west + Through perils without number now have reach’d; + To this the short remaining watch, that yet + Our senses have to wake, refuse not proof + Of the unpeopled world, following the track + Of Phœbus. Call to mind from whence ye sprang: + Ye were not form’d to live the lives of brutes, + But virtue to pursue and knowledge high.”[12] + +For two thousand years our ancestors, thus inspired, were facing the +setting sun, until the whole earth had been encircled by explorers. +Then, only a brief hundred years ago, the indomitable human spirit +turned eastward, toward the rising sun, the Orient, toward the buried +treasures and past beauties of the very peoples and civilizations which +had been pressing westward from the dawn of history. + +Led by Layard, Schliemann, Evans, and a host of others, and chiefly +inspired by de Vogué, Howard Crosby Butler became a crusader in this +eastward tide of exploration. As a follower in his youthful Princeton +days, and in the broad and deep discipline of his graduate years, he +prepared himself. A short seven years after graduation, namely, in the +year 1899, we find him in the deserts of north central Syria in full +command—no longer a follower, but a leader, imaginative, determined, +successful, soon becoming distinguished. No one of us who knew the +gentle and almost too gentlemanly student of art and the classics under +Marquand and Frothingham would have divined his latent powers to command +Orientals, whether Arabs, Bedouins, or Turks. _Suaviter in modo, +fortiter in re_, he was first trusted, then almost idolized, by his +workmen. + +It was the sterling integrity, as well as the consummate skill, of +Butler’s work in Syria (1899–1909) which led to the highest distinction +ever offered to an American and Christian explorer by a Mohammedan +government, namely, the unsolicited _invitation_ to enter and take +command of the excavation of Sardis. The Turks knew they could trust +Butler; they knew that he was absolutely honorable. The difficulties of +Sardis exploration had seemed insurmountable to others; the great period +of civilization and culture of Asia Minor, just older than the Syrian +and extending back to the Lydian and beyond, was buried fathoms deep. +These deeply buried ruins were to be entered under his brilliant +leadership between 1910 and 1922. His was the secret of +self-forgetfulness in a great cause. He never spoke to us of himself, +always of the workmen, of the colleagues, of the students, of the most +beloved Alma Mater. He was driven on, not by ambition, but by love—love +of his fellow men, love of his profession, love of beauty and truth. + +Butler’s genial and idealistic view of life is reflected in the +characters and personalities which he brought to life, and now that he +has taken his place among the noble shades of the long period of 600 B. +C. to 600 A. D., the artisans, the architects, the poets, the merchants, +the rulers, the governors, even the shade of the supreme ruler, Crœsus, +will be grateful to him. We hear them murmuring: “We have been charged +with a mere love of gain and of the gold of Pactolus. You have shown the +world that we loved beauty, that we kept our covenants, that we honored +our deities.” Still more will the shades of ancient Syria and the shades +of honorable men and women of the early Christian Church, from its very +beginnings beneath the shadows of the ruined pillars of Sardis to the +glorious temples of Syria, honor and welcome him. + +The span of Butler’s life as an explorer was only twenty-two years; his +name and his influence will endure as many centuries. So in _our_ +bereavement we are consoled by _his_ immortality. + + ... That which we are, we are: + One equal temper of heroic hearts, + Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will + To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.[13] + + + + + BIOGRAPHIES BY THE AUTHOR + 1883–1924 + + FRANCIS MAITLAND BALFOUR, Embryologist. _Science_, vol. 2, no. 31, + Sept. 7, 1883, pp. 299–301. + + ARNOLD GUYOT, Geologist. _The Princetonian_, vol. 8, 1883–84, p. 308. + + THOMAS H. HUXLEY, Biologist. + + Memorial address before the Biological Section of New York Academy + of Sciences, Nov. 11, 1895. _Trans. N. Y. Acad. Sci._, vol. 15, + 1895–96, Sig. dated Jan. 14, 15, 1896, pp. 40–50. _Science_, N. + S., vol. 3, no. 57, Jan. 31, 1896, pp. 147–154. + + “A Student’s Reminiscences of Huxley.” Biol. Lectures, Marine + Biol. Lab. of Wood’s Hole. Ginn & Co., Boston, 1896, pp. 29–42. + + G. BROWN GOODE, Zoologist. “Goode as a Naturalist.” Address at the G. + Brown Goode Memorial Meeting, U. S. National Museum, February 13. + _Science_, N. S., vol. 5, no. 114, March 5, 1897, pp. 373–378. + + EDWARD DRINKER COPE, Palæontologist. + + Memorial Biography. _Science_, N. S., vol. 5, no. 123, May 7, + 1897, pp. 705–717. + + “A Great Naturalist.” _The Century Magazine_, vol. 55, no. 1, Nov. + 1897, pp. 10–15. + + “Life and Works of Cope.” Introduction to Syllabus of Lectures on + the Vertebrata by E. D. Cope. Univ. of Penn., 1898, pp. + iii-xxxv. + + “Work in the Mammals.” Address in memory of E. D. Cope, delivered + at the meeting in the hall of the American Philosophical Society + held in Philadelphia for promoting useful knowledge, Nov. 12, + + 1897. _Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc. Memorial Volume I_, 1900, pp. 296–303. + + HENRY FILHOL, Palæontologist. _Science_, N. S., vol. 15, no. 388, June + 6, 1902, p. 912. + + KARL ALFRED VON ZITTEL, Palæontologist. _Science_, N. S., vol. 19, no. + 474, Jan. 29, 1904, pp. 186–188. + + JOHN BELL HATCHER, Palæontologist. “Explorations of John Bell Hatcher + for the Palæontological Monographs of the U. S. Geological Survey, + together with a statement of his contributions to American Geology + and Palæontology.” Monographs of the U. S. Geol. Survey, vol. 49, + “The Ceratopsia” by Hatcher, Marsh, Lull. Washington, 1907, pp. + 17–26. + + MORRIS KETCHAM JESUP, Administrator. + + _Science_, N. S., vol. 27, no. 684, Feb. 7, 1908, pp. 235–236. + + Address of Welcome at commemoration of the founding of the + American Museum of Natural History. Unveiling of the statue of + Morris K. Jesup. _Amer. Mus. 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S., vol. 41, no. 1059, + April 16, 1915, pp. 571–572. + + JOHN MUIR, Naturalist. _Sierra Club Bulletin_, vol. 10, no. 1, + January, 1916, pp. 29–32. + + GUSTAV SCHWALBE, Anatomist. _Science_, N. S., vol. 44, no. 1125, July + 21, 1916, p. 97. + + JOEL ASAPH ALLEN, Zoologist. + + Foreword to “Autobiographical Notes and a Bibliography of the + Scientific Publications of Joel Asaph Allen.” _Amer. Mus. Nat. + Hist. Publ._, 8vo, Dec. 26, 1916, xi and 215 pp. + + “An Appreciation.” _Nat. Hist._, vol. 21, pp. 513–515. + + WILLIAM BERRYMAN SCOTT, Palæontologist. “The Work of Professor William + Berryman Scott ’77.” _The Princeton Alumni Weekly_, vol. 17, no. 10, + Dec. 5, 1917, pp. 225–226. + + JOSEPH HODGES CHOATE, Lawyer. A Tribute from the Trustees of the + American Museum. _Mus. Publ._ 4to, June 25, 1918, 34 pp. + + THEODORE ROOSEVELT, Explorer. + + “Colonel Roosevelt.” _The (New York) Evening Post_, vol. 118, no. + 41, p. 7, Jan. 6, 1919. + + “Theodore Roosevelt, Naturalist.” _Nat. Hist._, vol. 19, no. 1, + March 28, 1919, pp. 9–10. + + “Roosevelt the Student of Nature.” _The New York Sun_, vol. 89, + no. 55, Nov. 3, 1921, p. 24. + + SAMUEL WENDELL WILLISTON, Palæontologist. + + _Journ. of Geol._, vol. 26, no. 8, Nov.-Dec., 1918, pp. 673–689. + _Science_, N. S., vol. 49, no. 1264, pp. 274–278, March 21, + 1919. _Bull. Geol. Soc. of Amer._, vol. 30, pp. 66–76. + + “Samuel Wendell Williston—The man and the palæontologist.” _Sigma + Xi Quart._, vol. 7, no. 1, July 19, 1919, pp. 2–6. + + JAMES BRYCE, Author. Address on Viscount Bryce at the Memorial Service + in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, March 5, 1922. + + JOHN BURROUGHS, Naturalist. “The Racial Soul of John Burroughs.” + Address at the Memorial Meeting of the American Academy of Arts and + Letters, November 18, 1921. + + HOWARD CROSBY BUTLER, Archæologist. Address at the Memorial Meeting in + Graduate College, Princeton University, October 21, 1922. + +----- + +Footnote 1: + +The author has written fifty-seven biographic sketches, forty of which + are listed in the appendix of this volume. + +Footnote 2: + +See his principal work, entitled “Naturalist on the River Amazons,” 2 + vols., 8vo, John Murray, London. 1863. + +Footnote 3: + +Alfred Tennyson, Edgar Allen Poe, Felix Mendelssohn, Oliver Wendell + Holmes, William Ewart Gladstone. + +Footnote 4: + +Vallery-Radot, René. “The Life of Pasteur.” Translation of Mrs. R. L. + Devonshire. (London, Archibald Constable & Co., Ltd., 1906, pp. 416, + 417.) + +Footnote 5: + +Osler, Sir Wm. “Man’s Redemption of Man.” 12mo. (Paul B. Hoeber, New + York.) + +Footnote 6: + +Aristotle (“Physics,” ii, 2). “Art mimics nature.” + +Footnote 7: + +Gen. 2:15; 3:19. + +Footnote 8: + +“The Vision of Dante Alighieri.” Translated by the Reverend H. F. Cary. + Canto XI, Hell, p. 47. “Dante’s Divine Comedy,” with an Introduction + and Notes by Edmund G. Gardner, M.A. (London, J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd. + New York, E. P. Dutton & Co.) + +Footnote 9: + +Longfellow’s Translation, Inf., Vol. XI, pp. 97–108. + +Footnote 10: + +This passage probably indicates that he was sensitive to being laughed + at for his interest in these animals. + +Footnote 11: + +“The Smaller Birds of the Adirondacks in Franklin County, New York” + (jointly with H. D. Minot). + +Footnote 12: + +Dante Alighieri, “Inferno” XXVI, ll. 112–120. Translated by the Reverend + H. F. Cary, A.M. + +Footnote 13: + +Alfred Tennyson. “Ulysses.” Last four lines. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + + + + TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES + + + ● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. + ● Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last + chapter. + ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. + ● Enclosed bold or blackletter font in =equals=. + ● The caret (^) serves as a superscript indicator, applicable to + individual characters (like 2^d) and even entire phrases (like + 1^{st}). + ● Subscripts are shown using an underscore (_) with curly braces { }, + as in H_{2}O. + ● HTML alt text was added for images that didn’t have captions. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77622 *** |