Fairchild: Alexander Graham Bell 



197 



16th century, so these note-books of 

 Mr. Bell will permit the world of 

 tomorrow to follow the thoughts and 

 the doings of a real discoverer in 

 science of the 19th and 20th centuries. 



Hidden in these note books will be 

 found the accounts of attempts which 

 he made again and again to penetrate 

 into the unknown, attempts which, 

 because they did not take him far 

 enough or because they satisfied his 

 own curiosity, or did not seem impor- 

 tant enough , have never been written up 

 for publication. These were not simply 

 the ideas of an idle afternoon, but 

 studies, some of which went on for 

 years, such as the studies of gravita- 

 tion, upon which he worked continu- 

 ously for at least ten years, and his 

 work with multinippled sheep, the 

 records of which cover hundreds of 

 pages of his note books and give de- 

 tailed accounts of experiments which 

 he carried on for twenty-five years. 



These note books show the almost 

 ceaseless acti\itity of Mr. Bell's won- 

 derful brain. That it was in strikingly 

 ceaseless activity during its waking 

 hours and remarkably dormant when 

 asleep, all of his intimate friends well 

 know. There was a soundness in his 

 sleep and a wakefulness in his waking 

 hours which always seemed to have 

 some connection with each other and 

 can hardly be attributed in any way to 

 his habits. They were, I believe, 

 characteristics with which he came 

 into the world. 



HIS OPTIMISM 



Critical of his own work, searching 

 in his analysis of the work of others, 

 Mr. Bell was never openly critical of 

 people. During the seventeen years 

 of my close association with him I 

 never heard from his lips a single 

 harsh criticism of anyone, and a gentle 

 rebuke which he once gave me when I 

 predicted the failure of a certain 

 acquaintance still rings in my ears. I 

 have often tried to discover his reason 

 for never criticizing others. It could 

 hardly come through any religious 

 theories, for he was not in sympathy 

 with religious dogma. Whether it 



came about through his early training, 

 during which he went through a deep 

 religious experience, or whether it 

 was his clear understanding of the 

 immediate effect which harsh criticism 

 of others had on his own happiness, I 

 do not know, but in any case he never 

 did form that pernicious habit, and 

 one of his favorite sayings was, 

 "One should never impute unworthy 

 motives to others." 



As strongly characteristic as his 

 abhorrence of personal criticism was 

 Mr. Bell's unquenchable optimism. He 

 often measured opinions by the direc- 

 tion in which they led, and if they 

 landed him in inaction he considered 

 them pessimistic and futile and he often 

 met them with the remark that they 

 were "destructive and not construc- 

 tive." 



He was optimistic by nature, but 

 his optimism was much more than a 

 response to his own feelings; it was 

 the deep conviction of a life of remark- 

 able observation and study. He never 

 tore down or destroyed, he always 

 tried to build up or construct. 



Often when our conversation took a 

 pessimistic turn during the war, Mr. 

 Bell would take one of his long de- 

 tached views of things and show how 

 the general drift of Evolution was 

 towards altruism. 



EUGENIC THEORIES 



To the members of the American 

 Genetic Association who believe in 

 the evolution of races of human beings 

 who shall haA'e on the average not only 

 larger, better thinking brains, but who 

 shall be morally as good as they are 

 intellectually great, Mr. Bell stands as 

 a remarkable example of the correla- 

 tion which it is believed exists between 

 intellectuality and morals. It is fas- 

 cinating to contemplate the possibility 

 of a world filled with human beings 

 who could see as clearly as did Mr. 

 Bell, the bearing of every action of the 

 individual upon the happiness of all, 

 and who could appreciate the respon- 

 sibility of one generation towards the 

 next and the tremendous bearing of 



