Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/424

 LUDWIG GUMPLOWICZ

LESTER F. WARD

A great sociological light was extinguished when, on August 20 last, Ludwig Gumplowicz ceased to exist. The double suicide of this remarkable man and his accomplished wife, Franciska, is now well known to the world. It was a deliberate act on the part of both, without any brain-softening or the slightest tinge of an unbalanced mental state on the part of either. They were a devoted couple, and his prolonged sacrifice for her during so many years of her invalid life would form the subject for a romance of heroism, could it be written. Life for either without the other was impossible, and the dread malady would soon, as both knew, have left her alone. Simultaneous death was far preferable. Nietzsche says that the suicide displays such hero- ism that he almost deserves to live. Never was this more true than in the present case.

As one of the certainly very few Americans who knew Gum- plowicz personally, it seems to me to be almost a duty to join in the general expression of regret at his loss. But his work was certainly done, and his tragic end only prevented a far sadder one by a few months at most. He had passed his seventy-first year, and even good health would not have preserved him for science many more active years. There is, therefore, reason for being reconciled to the fact as it has transpired.

The readers of this Journal know^ that I took special pains to journey from Vienna to Graz in 1903 on purpose to meet him and thresh but face to face some of the problems that we had long been discussing in letters. He has been called a pessimist, and perhaps deserved the name, but one passage in the article of his to which I have just referred, well describes himself ; and never will it be more appropriate to repeat it than now. He says :

When we speak of "pessimists," we think of morose growlers who are always cursing and never satisfied; while we mean by "optimists" people

^ See the issue of March, 1905, p. 645.

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