academy op 8c»»os] PERSONAL RELATIONS 203 



gilbert's religious views 



It has often been remarked that thoughtful men say little about their innermost feelings on 

 religious subjects, and this was eminently true of Gilbert. Most of his friends never heard him 

 mention such matters, but his silence did not mean that he had nothing to say. His convictions 

 were as deep and as sincere as if they had been in every respect instead of in no respect orthodox. 

 If it is here attempted to bring together from various sources some indications of his beliefs, the 

 attempt is not made with the idea of prying into his private affairs, but with the wish to show 

 again, as has so often been shown before, that a man may be pure in life and cheerful in living 

 even though he rejects the dogmas which are supposed by those who still hold them to be 

 essential to goodness and happiness. 



Gilbert was essentially and consistently a rationalist. He stood by himself, thoughtful 

 and independent, in all religious matters. He was a member of no sect; he rarely went to any 

 church, and when he did go it was to listen to the preacher as he would listen to a lecturer. His 

 beliefs were the product of his reason, not of his emotions ; they were essentially ethical rather 

 than theological. He saw clearly that man's advance in natural knowledge, based on observable 

 evidence and logical inference, has long been accompanied by a decrease in his supernatural 

 beliefs, derived from revelation or inspiration, so-called. He therefore trusted wholly to natural 

 knowledge, and let the decrease of the supernatural take its course. He was much interested 

 in the history of the successive steps in this decrease and knew that dangers were imputed to 

 each step by those unwilling to take them; but he knew also that others who have taken some of 

 the successive steps have found the imputed dangers to be only imagined ; and he was therefore 

 not dissuaded from taking his own further steps. His intellect was his guide, and he abandoned 

 all views for which it gave no support. 



Men like Gilbert would of course be called " disbelievers " by the modern conservative who, 

 apparently unaware that the supernatural elements in his ancestors' faith during the Dark Ages 

 were many as compared to the few that he accepts to-day, regards his own behef as a standard 

 that has been fixed, permanent and constant through the Christian centuries; and who, ignorant 

 of the great share that the intellect of great men has had in dispelling the superstitions of earlier 

 times, looks upon any intellect that may lead to a less behef than the one he holds as a cold and 

 self-willed guide. Yet Gilbert's nature was not cold, nor was his life selfish. On the contrary, 

 he was warm-hearted; his sympathy was easily aroused, and his generosity was always re- 

 sponsive; his disposition was gentle, kindly, loyal, and helpful. Religiously independent as he 

 was, he never sought to disturb the religious dependence of his friends. If his judgments were 

 sometimes stern, they were always sincere; and they were applied with much more severity to 

 himself than to anyone else. His will was strong, but it was controlled by a tender conscience. 

 "Virtue is its own reward" was to him no empty platitude; it was the rule of his life; further 

 reward he neither asked nor expected. He was self-trained in righteous living to a degree that 

 is reached by few men. It would have been as unnatural for him to do anything that he felt 

 was wrong, whatever the temptations to such a course, as it was natural for him to do anything 

 that he felt was right, whatever the difficulties in the way. Those who knew him best know that, 

 although at certain stages of his life the difficulties in the way of right doing were greater than 

 can be here told, he never swerved from the path of duty as he earnestly conceived it. It is a 

 remarkable tribute to this earnest disbeliever that one of his devoutly orthodox associates should 

 say of him: 



Gilbert was one of the most Christlike men I ever knew. 



Something of what Gilbert would have said, had he expressed himself on religious matters, 

 may be inferred from certain passages in his memoir written in 1899, on that excellent and 

 truly venerable geologist, Edward Orton, s with whom he had been associated during service on 

 the Ohio survey 30 years before. It appears that Orton as a young man about 1850, experienced 

 a "change of faith," when he replaced the Calvinistic creed in which he had been brought up for 

 "the shorter statement of Unitarianism." It is explained that this change cost Orton "not only 



'Bull. Geol. Soc. Amer., xi, 1900, 542-546. 

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