WORK OF VAN't HOPF BRUNI. 786 



His general culture was certainly very wide, particularly in the 

 scientific domain. He appreciated arts and letters and attached tj) 

 them great importance, even when taking the point of view of 

 pure science; that is what his inaugural address (as we have already 

 mentioned) teaches us, about the imagination in the exact sciences^ 

 we learn in it also that one of his favorite subjects for reading wais 

 the lives of great scientists, which he would devour in great quanti- 

 ties until he could cite more than 200 of them. 



As to his philosophic and religious ideas, we know that as a young 

 man he was admirer and partisan of the positive philosophy of Au^ 

 Comte ; but his opinions have never been, so far as I know, the object 

 of exterior manifestation ; so much the more from several expression;? 

 in a necrolog}^ of Roozeboom, in which he speaks, though in respect- 

 ful terms, of the religious fanaticism of the latter and of the desir© 

 which he expressed of being cremated ; so much the more, I say, can 

 one conclude from these expresions that he remained, to the end of 

 his life, faithful to his first ideas on these questions. 



He had not the qualities of a brilliant and popular orator and, a 

 stranger to every sort of dilettanteism, he had never yielded to tbh 

 desire to appear attractive ; but his lectures of a general and recapitu- 

 latory character are read none the less willingly and with profit be- 

 cause of the clearness and richness of their ideas, although they are 

 not always easy reading. In some necrologies — for example, in 

 those of Meyerhoifer and Roozeboom — he has given free course tb 

 sentiment, and succeeds often in finding efficacious and moving 

 expressions. 



Just as he was not an orator for large audiences, so he was not 

 made for elementary teaching; he said so himself, in a lecture, and 

 it was to rid himself of this obligation, for him a sacrifice, that hjB 

 decided to accept the situation which had been made for him in Ber- 

 lin. He gave here regularly a single course of one hour a week on 

 selected branches of physical chemistry, and from this course, which 

 was delivered to limited audiences, came his book, " Lessons on theo- 

 retical and physical chemistry," which had great success, thanks to 

 the original and completely personal mamier in which the subject 

 was developed. 



If the position of professor in the broad sense of the word was 

 often burdensome to him, he was always gratified with his role of 

 master to the young students, already mature, who worked with him 

 in his researches. 



As he never had large laboratories, he was never surrounded by 



very many pupils; but some of them have succeeded in making 



for themselves prominent places in science as well as in teaching. 



We have already spoken above of the interesting personality of the 



44863°— SM 1913 50 



