ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL 



SOME CHARACTERS OF HIS GREATNESS 



David Fairchild 



TRIBUTES to the greatness of 

 Alexander Graham Bell have been 

 paid by millions of people, and few 

 men have ever lived who have endeared 

 themselves to so vast a multitude of 

 their fellow men through the creations 

 of their brains. His discoveries and 

 his inventions have entitled him to all 

 the homage which he has received, and 

 it is wonderful to realize that the 

 homage is not paid, as it is to military 

 heroes, for protecting mankind from 

 evil, but for the actual increase in 

 happiness which his discoveries have 

 brought. 



There will be many to write of his 

 accomplishments in the fields of elec- 

 trical science, and there will be many 

 tributes paid to him in the field of 

 education, but as the years pass and 

 the great science of genetics takes its 

 place in those fields of intellectual ac- 

 tivity which are recognized as contrib- 

 uting most to the cause of human 

 happiness, Mr. Bell's clear vision of the 

 greatness of the possibilities which lie 

 in the study of the laws of heredity 

 will come out into strong relief and 

 demonstrate to the world what his 

 most intimate friends have always 

 known, that his was a super-brain 

 possessed with a vision of the future 

 which has been given to very few men. 



Mr. Bell was for many years a mem- 

 ber of the American Breeders' Associa- 

 tion, a most valuable advisor in its 

 reorganization into the American Ge- 

 netic Association, an active member of 

 its council for years, a financial backer 

 of the new magazine policy inaugu- 

 rated upon its reorganization and a 

 constructive critic of the conduct of 

 the Journal of Heredity in which he 

 took a deep interest. 



As his son-in-law, I was permitted 

 to know Mr. Bell in an intimate way, 

 and this intimacy makes it difficult for 



me to give, as I would like to give here , 

 the kind of estimate of him which I 

 think he would approve of were he still 

 living. 



His belief in the force of the laws of 

 heredity, strengthened by his own re- 

 searches into the inheritance of deaf- 

 ness and longevity, and his experience 

 with his multinippled sheep was so 

 great that I feel sure he would disap- 

 prove of anything which attributed 

 his greatness to causes which were 

 mystical in character. And in this 

 tribute which I shall try to write as 

 though I were going to submit it to 

 him for approval, I shall dwell upon 

 those things which seem to me to 

 characterize him as the most unusual 

 human being which it has been my 

 fortune to know. 



THE CLEARNESS OF HIS THINKING 



It seems to me that the most char- 

 acteristic thing about Mr. Bell was the 

 startling clearness of his thinking. 

 The thoughts of the average person, 

 when expressed in words, often pro- 

 duce, as it were, a somewhat blurred 

 image on the brain of the listener, but 

 with Mr. Bell there never was any 

 doubt in my mind as I listened to him 

 that he had said what he intended to 

 say. He had produced, as he intended, 

 a brain pattern of a certain character 

 in my own. I might not understand it, 

 but if I did not it was because I was not 

 sufficiently familiar with the facts. 

 It never crossed my mind to question 

 the clearness of his statement. 



This clearness of his thinking seems 

 to have characterized him even as a 

 boy, for it shows itself strikingly in an 

 article on resonance written when he 

 was only eighteen years of age. I have 

 never been able to think of it as other 

 than a varietal character of his wonder- 

 ful brain. 



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