Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/245



are the men whose influence upon scientific thought is so closely connected with their personality as Mr. Newell's. He was not one of those who, in their enthusiasm for facts, are likely to forget the objects which the newly-discovered data are to serve, and whose departure from the field of science comes to signify the loss of a powerful centre of activity, through whose agency many valuable treasures may have been acquired, but whose personality has disappeared behind the urgent demands of action. His was the power of directing the thoughts of students into the channels of his own mind, by means of the influence of his personality and his enthusiasm, and of increasing and directing their thirst for new information. What he achieved is not so much due to what he did, as to what he was.

"Thus it has happened that Mr. Newell, although a man of literary inclination, came to be a power in the field of anthropology. His first and most remarkable achievement, the foundation of the [American] Folklore Society, brought him into close contact, not only with the students of European folklore, of which field he himself was master, but also with the students of primitive tribes, and without assuming to become an anthropologist, he exerted a lasting influence upon many investigators. Twenty years ago, when his interests were first turned in this