HUMBOLDT POPULARIZES SCIENCE. 377 



ancler," William wrote to a friend in Vienna, " Alexander 

 is really a 'puissance,' and has gained a new kind of 

 glory by his lectures. They are unsurpassable. He is 

 always the same ; and it is still one of the principal fea- 

 tures of his character to have a peculiar timidity and 

 undeniable anxiety in the mode of his appearance." 

 But Herr William that is not strange, for your truly 

 great man is always modest. The greatest of men — the 

 " myriad-minded" Shakespeare was so, or he would never 

 have left his divine plays to the mercy of the players and 

 commentators. 



" These lectures of Humboldt," says his biographer, 

 Professor Klencke, " were also new and remarkable in 

 respect to the position which he took towards the people. 

 For while other learned men, whose social position is 

 always higher than that of the people, nearly all, in 

 their scientific and academic pride, did not deem it worth 

 their while to disseminate their knowledge among the 

 people, whom it must ultimately most benefit, while 

 they generally keep their learning as the property and 

 mystery of a caste, and interchange it among themselves ; 

 while they consider it infra dig. and degrading for a man 

 of science to popularize his knowledge ; Alexander Von 

 Humboldt set them the noble example that a baron, a 

 chamberlain, and confidential adviser of his king-, did 

 not consider it beneath his rank and dignity to appear 

 publicly as the teacher of his favourite science; he 

 showed that a true man of science does not attach him- 

 self to an exclusive caste, and that all considerations of 

 birth, rank, and title, are as nothing in the high service 

 of science. And thus, Alexander, in the impulses of his 

 heart and mind fulfilled the noble duty which the men- 



