SKETCH OF WILLIAM KEITH BROOKS. 401 



new country, where freedom of development was not so sharply 

 restricted but that all paths of life seemed equally open to one who 

 would work. As a boy he was not one of those precocious natu- 

 ralists of the common sort whose collecting instincts find expression 

 in the hoarding of dead animals or plants rather than the neater 

 postage stamp; names and authorities, classes and species, neatly 

 arranged mummies, were not his delight. At first there seemed 

 no sign that zoology would claim him as a most ardent admirer. 

 Yet he was fond of live things and their ways, and introduced into 

 his home that most delightful microcosm, the fresh-water aquarium 

 (so much neglected in this country), in which he could observe at 

 ease the habits and slow changes of living things when their native 

 haunts were not x accessible. Such early interest in the essential 

 wonders of livingness rather than in man's artificial classification 

 of phenomena was thus prophetic of much of his later originality 

 of thought and view. 



He has never forgotten how much he owes to the instruction of 

 the earnest and broad-minded teachers in the public schools of Cleve- 

 land. 



His college life began at Hobart, where two years left a deep 

 impression from an acquaintance with Berkeley's thought, gained 

 in browsing in the library, and long treasured up to produce fruit 

 in philosophic views of maturer years. Then at Williams College, 

 where the notable Natural History Society was sending out its expe- 

 dition across South America, his love of Nature matured and spe- 

 cialized for two years longer, until he received the A. B. .degree in 

 1870. It was "Williams also that later, in 1893, bestowed upon him 

 the LL. D. degree. For him the completion of college life was 

 truly the " commencement " and not the finish of his intellectual 

 training. His strong trend toward pure science and abstract men- 

 tal life forced him onward into post-graduate work. But this re- 

 quired funds, and America was not Germany; the struggle for ex- 

 istence was not here so intense that one might not win bread in 

 many walks of life without special training, and parents did not 

 need to extend the larval period of support for offspring beyond 

 the completion of college life to gain for them a place in any rank, 

 social or intellectual. Now, a rapidly increasing need for the Ph. D. 

 degree as entrance to professional life, necessitating several years 

 of post-graduate study, often forces parents to take up their share 

 in the increased burden. Then, however, few were agreed as to 

 the advisability of prolonging an unpractical life devoted to study 

 beyond what seemed the maximum limit of unproductive prepara- 

 tion for life the day of graduation at college. Beyond that the 

 young man must make his own way as best he might. The subject 



VOL. LV. 30 



