Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/75

Rh seen to tend! Harvard University lost James Russell Lowell in 1891, and Asa Gray in 1888. The letters of both of these eminent men have been published. Lowell's letters grow sad and discouraged, and he gives way more and more to the pessimistic spirit. Gray is optimistic steadily and to the end. The difference was partly due to natural temperament, but chiefly, I think, to the influence of their respective professions. The subject material of the literary man is familiar human nature and familiar human surroundings, and his task is to express the thoughts and dreams which these suggest. He must compete with the whole past, with all the genius that has been. There is nothing new under the sun, he exclaims. But to us it is a proverb contradicted by our daily experience.

The attitude of literary men is indeed sad. Lowell opens his essay on Chaucer with the question, "Can any one hope to say anything, not new, but even fresh, on a topic so well worn?" and answers, "It may well be doubted." This feeling that anything new is impossible is not modern. La Bruyère begins his Caractères with "Tout est dit, et Ton vient trop tard depuis plus de sept mille ans qu'il y a des hommes, et qui pensent"; and two hundred years later Joubert repeats: "Toutes les choses, qui sont aisées à bien dire, ont été parfaitement dites; le reste est notre affaire ou notre tôche: tâche penible."

Another trait which is very striking shows itself, not in all naturalists, but in nearly all great naturalists—the trait of humility—not the humility of self-depreciation, but the humility which is the privilege of those who pursue a high ideal. The great naturalist cares for the absolulely true, and, though he may know that he is abler than other men, he feels only a minor interest in personal comparison, and measures himself by a different standard. A man who estimates himself by an ideal which he never fully attains, learns humility in its noblest form. Von Baer, Ernst Heinrich Weber, Helmholtz, and Darwin were men of that rank; and doubtless the very greatness mentally of such men enables them to estimate justly the proportion their personal contributions bear to the whole of science.

The sad side of an investigator's life is its inevitable loneliness, so far as his special work is concerned. It rarely happens that one of us finds a colleague at hand able to appreciate his special work; but at these meetings we each find appreciation and stimulus, and we return refreshed to our isolated labors, return stronger to stand by ourselves, as men must who wish to share in the serious work of the world.

The solidarity of our profession, the mutual loyalty not only of naturalists but of all scientific men, is very great and of immense value. It is perhaps the most important function of this