446 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



nothing in the prevalence of mechanical conceptions of life, and 

 of mind, or in the unlimited extension of these conceptions, to 

 show that this hard thing to suppose is true." And some of his 

 point of view is paraphrased by an English reviewer as follows: 



"But supposing the mechanical conception of life to be estab- 

 lished, and admitting that the argument from contrivance would 

 thereby lose its force, the attempted proof of the existence of a 

 designer would not on that account be supplanted by disproof. 

 Further, whatever the scientific account of nature may ultimately 

 be, it can throw no light upon the primal cause or final purpose 

 of the whole or of any part. Science tells us what takes place, 

 and how it takes place, she discovers the succession of events and 

 gives us a reasonable confidence in the steadfastness of that suc- 

 cession, but she refuses to admit any necessity therefor, and as to 

 any cause that lies behind the veil of the physical universe, she re- 

 mains for ever dumb." 



But Professor Brooks was no mere dreamer and theorist hold- 

 ing himself aloof from the practical needs of his fellow-beings. 

 His opportunities for carrying on his own researches did not lead 

 him to neglect doing his best for his pupils and for the community 

 in which he lived; and his best was to show them his ideals and 

 to let practical execution develop their own powers. In 1879 

 he took part in a course of elementary teaching in Biology for 

 teachers in Baltimore, giving fifteen Saturday morning lectures 

 with three times as much laboratory work in which he was aided 

 by Dr. S. F. Clarke. The fifteen teachers who applied, and six 

 of them were women, were led to study such animals as amoeba, 

 hydra, sponge, starfish, sea-urchin, earthworm, leech, crawfish, 

 crab, grasshopper, mussel, oyster, and squid. 



The laboratory directions he drew up were sought for and used 

 by Prof. Alpheus Hyatt in his work with teachers in the Boston 

 Society of Natural History, and also by Walter Faxon in his work 

 with undergraduates at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at 

 Harvard, so that Brooks finally in 1882 made a book, his Handbook 

 of Invertebrate Zoology, which was a most valuable and original 

 text-book to aid the student at the sea-shore. He also took part in 

 1882 in an attempt to aid the employees of the Baltimore and 



