The Days of a Man 1892 



In the University of California were numerous 

 teachers of ability and high character. Best known 

 A reverent and best beloved was Dr. Joseph Le Conte, pro- 

 evoiutionist f essor o f Biology, whose acquaintance I first made 

 in 1880. Le Conte had been one of the three Harvard 

 students who composed Agassiz's original class in 

 America, the others being William James and David 

 A. Wells. He had a singularly sunny disposition, 

 a lucid literary style, and a deep feeling for nature. 

 An evolutionist of advanced type, he was, neverthe- 

 less, eager to conciliate rather than to confute 

 opponents, so that his illuminating lectures on the 

 so-called conflicts between science and religion did 

 much to reconcile believers to the fact that the two 

 phases of human thought must, as Darwin insisted, 

 "each go its own way, even though the meeting 

 point be far off." 



Moses and Dr. Bernard Moses, professor of Political Science, 

 a man c f bj-oad mm d an d strong will, was for years 

 a very influential member of the California faculty. 

 George H. Howison of the chair of Philosophy was 

 the ultra-Hegelian of America. He preached the 

 reality of the unreal, the objective existence of 

 innate ideas, the supernatural nature of the state as 

 an entity existing apart from the units that com- 

 pose it. Speaking at one time of the "divine origin" 

 of government, he was followed by Dr. Moses, who 

 cleverly pleaded for the divine origin of wheel- 

 barrows! A state, argued Moses, is an instrument 

 to serve a need of humanity. So, in its degree, is 

 the wheelbarrow. 



Being at one time invited by Howison to speak 

 before his Philosophical Society, I gave an address 

 which I named "Standeth God within the Shadow." 



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