432 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



went to Hobart College, Geneva, New York, and here a most 

 potent influence acted to fashion the ultimate philosophy of his 

 life. Eagerly seizing the opportunities offered by the college 

 library he read and pondered the works of Bishop Berkeley with 

 results that came to the surface in later life. Hobart thus became 

 a formative force that he acknowledges in the dedication of his 

 life-work in philosophic thought, his Foundations of Zoology, in 

 the words: "To Hobart College; where I learned to study, and, I 

 hope, to profit by, but not to blindly follow, the writings of that 

 great thinker on the principles of science, George Berkeley, I have, 

 by permission, dedicated this book." 



While the environment given him by Hobart was so potent, it 

 was brief in extent of time, for at the end of the sophomore 

 year he left Hobart and entered Williams College, Williamstown, 

 Massachusetts, where he graduated in 1870. At Williams College 

 he took active interest in the famous Lyceum of Natural History 

 that sent an expedition across South America. He was marked 

 amongst his fellows as an unusual individual, was known as "the 

 philosopher" and became the center of interest as the man with 

 a microscope. In his room assembled those who appreciated his 

 ability to lead in the intellectual interpretations of nature and to 

 make her facts clear and of absorbing interest. A noted zoologist, 

 who as lower classman was once in Brooks' room tells an anecdote 

 that shows Brooks' peculiar originality. It might be called an 

 application of the microtome method and runs as follows: Wishing 

 to demonstrate a cross-section of a human hair and finding it 

 impossible to cut one thin enough, Brooks shaved his face and 

 then engaged the boys in talk till such time as he thought his 

 beard grown a little, when shaving again he got the desired slices 

 in the lather. 



At Williams, Sanborn Tenney taught Botany and Zoology and 

 Brooks stood high in his natural history studies but also in Greek 

 and especially in mathematics, and when he graduated at the age 

 of 22 he was undecided which of these abstract studies he should 

 follow. 



He was an independent and thorough scholar, but took no 



