WORK OF THE NATURALIST IN THE WORLD. 67 



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 discour- 

 aged, 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 any- 

 thing new is impossible is not modern. La Bruyere begins his 

 Caracteres with " Tout est dit, et Ton vient trop tard depuis plus 

 de sept niille ans qu'il y a des hommes, et qui pensent " ; and two 

 hundred years later Joubert repeats : " Toutes les choses, qui sont 

 aise*es a bien dire, ont 6t6 parfaitement dites ; le reste est notre 

 affaire ou notre tache : tache penible." 



Another trait which is very striking shows itself, not in all 

 naturalists, but in nearly all great naturalists the trait of humil- 

 ity 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 stand- 

 ard. 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 stimu- 

 lus, and we return refreshed to our isolated labors, return stronger 

 to stand by ourselves, as men must who wish to share in the seri- 

 ous 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 im- 

 mense value. It is perhaps the most important function of this 



