OBITUARY NOTICE OF ROBERTSON SMITH 291 



however, one of these speculations, so closely connected with Stewart's Radiation 

 work as to require particular mention, especially as it seems not yet to have 

 received proper consideration, viz. " Equilibrium of Temperature in an enclosure con- 

 taining matter in visible motion" (Nature, IV. p. 331, 1871). The speculations are all 

 of a somewhat transcendental character, and therefore very hard to reduce to forms 

 in which they can be experimentally tested ; but there can be no doubt that 

 Stewart had the full conviction that there is in them all an underlying reality, the 

 discovery of whose exact nature would at once largely increase our knowledge. 



Of the man himself I cannot trust myself to speak. What I could say will 

 easily be divined by those who knew him intimately ; and to those who did not 

 know him I am unwilling to speak in terms which, to them, would certainly appear 

 exaggerated. 



PROFESSOR ROBERTSON SMITH. 

 (From Nature, April 12, I894.) 1 



The death of Prof. Robertson Smith, on March 31, at a comparatively early 

 age, is a profound loss to the whole thinking world. 



Unfortunately for Science, and (in too many respects) for himself, his splendid 

 intellectual power was diverted, early in his career, from Physics and Mathematics, 

 in which he had given sure earnest of success. He turned his attention to eastern 

 languages, and acquired a knowledge of Hebrew, Arabic, and other tongues, quite 

 exceptional in the case of a Briton. 



Dr Smith was born at Keig, Aberdeenshire, in 1846, and educated at Aberdeen 

 University, the New College, Edinburgh, and the Universities of Bonn and Got- 

 tingen. In 1868 he became Assistant to the Professor of Physics in Edinburgh 

 University ; in 1 870, at the age of twenty-four, he was appointed to the chair of 

 Hebrew in the Free Church College of Aberdeen. A few years later he fell under 

 the suspicion of holding heterodox views concerning Biblical history. Orthodoxy 

 raised her voice against him in the newspapers, in the churches, in the Presbyteries, 

 and finally, in the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, and the 

 clamour culminated in his dismissal from the Professorship at Aberdeen in 1881. 

 This was effected, not by a direct condemnation of his published opinions, but by 

 a monstrous (temporary) alliance between ignorant fanaticism and cultivated Jesuitry 

 which deplored the " unsettling tendency " of his articles ! 



He next became successor to Prof. Baynes in the Editorship of the last 

 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica ; and here his business qualities, as well 



1 The Article is unsigned; but Tail initialled it as his in his own copy of Nature. It 

 seems necessary to mention this in view of the somewhat "hearsay" language of the sixth 

 paragraph. The strong language at the end of the third paragraph embodies Tail's often 

 expressed views of the great " Heresy Hunt." 



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