Professor Gildersleeve's Address 5 



myself who were not familiar with the patient processes 

 of his scientific research, the word "genius" served to 

 explain everything. He seemed to us as one of those 

 rarely-gifted beings, in whom child-like sensitiveness is 

 paired with immediate insight, nay, is one with it. And, 

 if those who had not the specialist's knowledge of his 

 sphere of work attributed too much to intuition, because 

 he saw so much of creation's handiwork that we did not 

 see; still there has never been a great scientific genius 

 without vision ; and so it came about that in the solemn 

 hour of his obsequies I thought not so much of the toil- 

 some path by which he had reached the mount of vision, 

 as of the wonderful verse that tells of the angels of the 

 children, for in some things his intimates said he was as 

 a child, and of that other wonderful verse about the open 

 face with which are beheld the great secrets of the uni- 

 verse. No one can grapple with the great problems that 

 he hias set forth in his scientific system and fail to recog- 

 nize in him a profound thinker. No one that ever came 

 into personal relations with him can have failed to take 

 knowledge of his pure and lofty and kindly spirit, and so 

 I, too, have felt the touch of his master mind and have 

 divined the essential sweetness of his noble nature. I am 

 not a stranger to the grief that reigns in this gathering of 

 his associates, his pupils, his friends, and I am grateful 

 for the privilege that has been accorded me of adding to 

 the wealth of these memorial services my poor tribute of 

 admiration and affection. 



