BENJAMIN OSGOOD PEIRCE. 853 



a kind, in subject or in treatment, to flare upon the attention of the 

 pubHc; hut whenever he made the acquaintance of a mathematician 

 or a physicist of the first rank, hke the late Sir George Darwin, he was 

 recognized as a fellow and a peer. Professor Andrew Gray of Glasgow 

 says, "All mathematicians and physical workers in this country 

 looked up to him as a leader of thought and investigation in America." 

 Sir Joseph Larmor speaks of " the increasing company over here who 

 knew and appreciated him personally" and of "the still larger number 

 who knew only his scientific work," Karl Pearson, who w^as a fellow 

 student with Peirce in Germany, writes, "Benjamin Osgood Peirce 

 was representative of all that was best in science; he was never a 

 self-seeker nor a self-advertiser, and I learnt more from him than 

 from many of our professed teachers in Berlin.". . ."If I had to give 

 the name of the man who represented America best to me, I should 

 still say, after thirty-four years, Benjamin Osgood Peirce." It is 

 plain from these quotations that the reputation of our friend was 

 increasing at the time of his death. 



Eminent in his profession, beyond its wide limits he was an out- 

 standing personality to all who knew him well. He was a prodigious 

 reader, and once told the present WTiter that he had read the Encyclo- 

 pedia Britannica through several times. He was fond of meeting 

 classical scholars on their own ground; not long before his death he 

 quoted 0\'id fluently and evinced a lively interest in the psychology of 

 the Greek Optative. His service for many years as a member of the 

 Har^-ard Committee on Honors and Higher Degrees in Music was 

 justified by his extraordinary musical sensibility and his appreciation, 

 intuitive as well as learned, of musical compositions. He made music 

 in various ways, some of them rather surprising. 



In a place and a time of the least restraint in religious matters he 

 Cjuietly declined to enter upon discussions of personal religious belief, 

 and, though perhaps shaken at times by the same tremendous questions 

 which beset Carlyle, he remained steadfastly in the Baptist communion 

 to which his father had belonged. With characteristic force of gro- 

 tesque phrase he described the varieties of belief which were exhibited 

 in Appleton Chapel after the breaking up of the World's Congress 

 held at Chicago, in 1893, as "a job lot of religions." These words 

 indicated no bitterness or bigotry, but merely his conviction of the 

 needlessness and uselessness of seeking abroad for religious doctrine 

 or spiritual inspiration. At the last his own faith and trust were 

 serene. 



Peirce was proverbial among his friends for a certain habit of 



