'1'^ [Lesley. 



Obituary JSotice of Edouard Desor. By J. P. Lesley. 

 (Read before the American PMlosopMcal Society, May 19, ISSJ.) 



The winter of 1881-2 will be remembered for the great losses which the 

 world of culture suffered in rapid succession : Draper, Longfellow, Emer- 

 son, in America ; Darwin and Desor in Europe. Other names, also, 

 were erased from the roll of the world's prophets ; but these were teachers 

 of the prophets — primates and patriarchs in the hierarchy — masters on 

 whom others depended, and to whom they deferred — leaders in the pro- 

 cession of thought and expression of thought — founders of styles and meth- 

 ods — builders of superior edifices of human linowledgc and liuman taste ; 

 cliaracterizing the centurj^ in an active as well as a passive mood, and 

 therefore leaving Christendom in mourning for their disappearance. 



The world remarks that these men were much beloved. They were gen- 

 tle, loving beings, as amiable as they were vigorous of soul. That the 

 world loved them and heard tliem gladly proves that the world is better 

 than it was. That they could sing, and think, and work, without moles- 

 tation, proves that the world is wiser than it was. The powers hostile 1o 

 liuman enlightenment have lost tlieir tlirones ; personal liberty is estab- 

 lished. The tribune and the press are, the pulpit is becoming, enfrar.- 

 cliised. And as witli personal liberty a higher tone of private morals lias 

 supervened, so with liberty of speech and pen has come into the life of 

 Christendom a gentler spirit of controversy and a more judicial method of 

 investigation. Fear is the mother of cruelty and its brood of vices intel- 

 lectual and physical. Persecution has always bred heresy. The excom- 

 municated hate the excommunicators ; exiles are emancipated from all 

 respect and affection for government. The suppression of ideas by pliys- 

 ical force is like the compression of explosives ; times are always coming 

 to apply the match or pull the trigger. Men who are forced to ^y from 

 their ancestral homes to begin a new career elsewhere, acquire rapidly by 

 the struggle for life a noble development of all their powers ; gaze 

 upon the new world around them whli new eyes ; inform themselves of 

 what would never have interested them ; all}^ themselves with the strong- 

 est and wisest whom they find ; invent enterprises ; place scaling ladders 

 against the ramparts of fame, and in the end come to be of tlie number 

 of the world's rulers. 



Such was the experience of the man whom, as a member of this Society, 

 we remember and lament, Edouard Desor of Neufchatel. 



The Desors were Huguenots expelled from France by the revocation 

 of the edict of Nantes. They settled in Hesse -Homburg, and helped to 

 form there a little colony which retained in use the French language in tlieir 

 dwellings, schools and churches, while it adopted the German language 

 for intercourse with the world around. 



In 1811 (Feb. 13th) our late distinguished fellow-member Edouard 

 Desor was born at Friedrichsdorf near Frankford-on-the-jVIain. He was 



