MAHAN. 125 



38. ALFRED THAYER MAHAN. 



ALFRED THAYER MAHAN was born at West Point, New York, September 

 27, 1840. He went to boarding-school, then to Columbia College, New York 

 City, in 1854, and to the Naval Academy in September 1856 (at 15 years of age), 

 whence he was graduated in 1859, and went on a cruise in the Congress to the South 

 Atlantic. Commissioned lieutenant in 1861, he saw service in the blockade of the 

 Southern and Gulf States. For the next twenty years he was in active service at 

 sea. While in the Asiatic squadron he saw much of China and Japan. He was 

 appointed president of the newly established Naval War College at Newport, 

 Rhode Island, and served in that capacity from 1886 to 1889 and in 1892-1893. 

 In 1890 his "The influence of sea power upon history, 1660-1783," was published. 

 It has been used as a text-book in all naval colleges of the world. While in com- 

 mand of the Chicago in European waters, he was given the honorary degrees of 

 D. C. L. by Oxford and LL. D by Cambridge in recognition of the value of this 

 work; similar degrees were given him by universities of the United States. He 

 was a member of the naval board during the war with Spain and was appointed 

 by President McKinley a delegate to the Hague Peace Conference. He wrote 

 numerous works on naval matters; a history of his experience in the blockade, 

 "Influence of Sea Power on the French Revolution and Empire," "Life of Far- 

 ragut," "Life of Nelson" (the greatest of Nelson biographies), "The Interest of 

 America in Sea Power," "Lessons of the War with Spain," "Sea Power in its Re- 

 lation to the War of 1812," and others, including an autobiographical work "From 

 Sail to Steam," 1907. He died December 1, 1914. 



Mahan had the hypokinetic temperament which is so common among the 

 Irish. This appears clearly in the following self-revelation : 



" While I have no difficulty in entering into civil conversation with a stranger 

 who addresses me, I rarely begin, having, upon the whole, a preference for an intro- 

 duction. This is not perverseness; but lack of facility. I have, too, an abhorrence 

 of public speaking, and a desire to slip unobserved into a back seat wherever I 

 am, which amounts to a mania; but I am bound to admit I get both these disposi- 

 tions from my father, whose Irish was undiluted by foreign admixture." 



This hypokinesis forms the background of his thorough work. He found 

 pleasure in study and writing; he did not feel pressure to rush his work, and took 

 time to do it well. His philosophic insight permeates it all. As a writer on 

 naval history he has never been equaled. He understands the essential features 

 of the naval battle he has to describe and he knows how to set them forth. He 

 ranks among the first of the world's biographers. More, perhaps, than any other, 

 he has pointed out how inherited traits of personality have determined performance. 

 Since his biographies are rich in incidents showing the reaction of the propositus 

 to particular situations, they are of the greatest importance for a psychological 

 analysis of the personality. Of his own reactions as an author he writes: "The 

 favorable criticism upon the first sea-power book not only surprised me, but had 

 increased my ambition and my self-confidence." "I now often recall with envy 

 the happiness of those days, when the work was its own reward, and quite sufficient, 

 too; almost as good as a baby." "None but a blockhead would write for money, 

 unless he had to." (Mahan, 1907, p. 311.) 



Mahan belongs to a philosophical, scholarly race. His father, Dennis Hart 

 Mahan, born April 1808, was professor of engineering, civil as well as military, 



