588 WILLIAM DWIGHT WHITNEY. 



invariably the mere echoers of the views of his adversaries across "the 

 ocean, and not only were they never very numerous, they were never 

 very effective. 



But without expressing any opinion upon the comparative value of 

 the work he accomplished, there were certain characteristics distin- 

 guishing his scholarship which can be read and known of all men, 

 and which naturally forced themselves upon the attention of any one 

 whose relations to him personally were close enough to render it fre- 

 quently necessary to seek his advice and to ask his direction. One of 

 these was his thorough intellectual independence. No one was ever 

 less influenced than he by the authority of great names. No one was 

 ever less affected by the general acceptation of plausible theories. He 

 came to the examination of every subject, not with any desire either 

 to adopt or to attack the conclusions of others, but to study it for him- 

 self in the light of truth. It was accordingly his good fortune to see 

 views, which he had unsparingly censured while they were widely held, 

 abandoned by the vast body of scholars. The controversies in which 

 he became engaged were, indeed, largely due to his severe and almost 

 contemptuous criticism of doctrines which had little to show in their 

 favor but superficial plausibility, though often presented in a capti- 

 vating form. His unhesitating rejection of theories which had wide 

 vogue, his exposure of the fallacies of men with wide reputations, 

 distressed always, and often irritated, that body of partisans attaching 

 themselves to noted names, who, while never possessing the courage 

 of their own convictions, display invariably the most unreasoning and 

 undaunted hardihood in upholding the convictions of others. 



Joined with this intellectual independence was his thorough intel- 

 lectual sanity, if it be not more correct to say that the former was the 

 result of the latter. It is, at any rate, the one quality which will give 

 the greatest stability to the work he accomplished. The advance of 

 scholarship necessarily causes many previously accepted beliefs to be 

 reviewed, many statements to be modified, many received theories to 

 be exploded. It not unfrequently happens that the individual himself 

 lives to see the views he had imposed upon the world set aside as a result 

 of the fuller and clearer light furnished by later investigations. From 

 this too common calamity Whitney has been saved by the sanity of his 

 judgment. There are few scholars who have been called upon to 

 retract, or even modify, so little as he by the advance of knowledge. 

 From this cause his reputation never had to suffer during his life, and, 

 so far as the future can be foreseen, it is little likely to suffer in the 

 years to come. 



