4 William Keith Brooks 



PROFESSOR GILDERSLEEVE 



As one of those who knew Dr. Brooks longest, I have 

 been requested to say a few words about the rare man, 

 the chosen spirit, whose presence was a light to this Uni- 

 versity, whose work will abide forever as a precious 

 possession ; and it is all ours, for this was his intellectual 

 and spiritual home. But, after listening to President 

 Remsen's analysis of his varied activity, and to Dr. Hurd's 

 vivid description of the man as he lived and moved, I 

 realize my utter incompetence to deal with so complex a 

 subject, and the feeling returns that first came to expres- 

 sion upon the announcement of his death, the vain regret 

 that, although we had lived and worked so long within 

 the same academic walls, I had not known him better. 

 It is the same feeling that comes over one when one thinks 

 of all the music that might have lifted the soul to higher 

 regions and yet has died unheard. But Dr. Brooks had 

 fixed his residence far from the haunts of most of us, and, 

 in any case, it is a sad fact that only a few in this body of 

 seekers after truth ever come into close personal contact. 

 In the rush of the life that we must lead if we are to 

 be faithful, we only get glimpses of what is going forward 

 in the minds and hearts of our colleagues. We are like 

 trains moving on parallel tracks. We catch sight of some 

 face, some form that appeals to us, and it is gone. Yet, 

 in the measure of my understanding, there was no one of 

 our number that I admired more than I did Dr. Brooks. 



The very first lecture I heard him deliver, when he came 

 here a young man, revealed to me at once his uncompro- 

 mising demand of scientific evidence and his marvellous 

 power of generalization. His popular talks, simple in 

 their form as simple could be, opened vistas of startling 

 significance to those who had learned to think at all. His 

 thoughts did not so much wander through eternity as 

 explore eternity with a measuring-rod. To outsiders like 



