400 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cipal sovereign, Kaniclika.* Nevertheless, the inscriptions offer 

 still other historical computations, as, for instance, that of the Goup- 

 tas era, which began in the year 240 of the Caka era, and that of 

 Yikramaditja, which was made to begin retrospectively fifty-six 

 years b. c. Hence arise complications of a nature to make the task 

 of paleography and history no lighter. — Translated for the Popular 

 Science Monthly from del et Terre {from the author^s essays on Clas- 

 sical Influences on the Scientific and Literary Culture of India). 



T 



SKETCH OF WILLIAM KEITH BEOOKS. 



HE old problem of Nature versus nurture that meets us in 

 -L studying the life history of any organism becomes especially 

 interesting in dealing with the biography of men of eminence. Are 

 their achievements the inevitable expression of the natural forces 

 innate in them at birth, or the product of environmental influences, 

 or some resultant of these two factors? And how much may we in 

 each case assign to one factor or to the other? 



These difficult questions naturally suggest themselves in glancing 

 at the life of the subject of this sketch. Like so many men who 

 have won prominence in comparatively new countries, he seemed, in 

 an emdronment that had no apparent relation to his future, to grow 

 from innate tendencies toward something not suggested by the cir- 

 cumstances about him, even to grow in opposition to the molding 

 influences of these, and to conquer them. Later, however, we find 

 him surrounded by influences that made a particular mode of self- 

 expression easy, if they may not be said to have forced such expres- 

 sion. It was then that the casual observer might say that the cir- 

 cumstances made the man; yet, looking backward, we can trace the 

 initiative in the man that led him into the congenial environment. 

 A selection of proper environment to express Nature has been 

 rightly claimed as a potent factor in all organic life; nurture, then, 

 comes as a secondary power to mold, or rather to translate, the 

 inherent power. 



William Keith Brooks, the second son of Oliver Allen Brooks 

 and Eleanora Bradbury, daughter of the Rev. Phineas Kingsley, 

 was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1848. In 1877 he married Amelia 

 Katherine, dauglitcr of Edward T. Schultz and Susan Rebecca, 

 daughter of David L. Martin. He has two children. 



Brooks grew up amid the stimulating influences of a relatively 



* M. Sylvain Levi has, however, lately reopened the qivestion of the initial date of 

 this era. 



