552 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



THE LATE PROF. TYNDALL. 



BY the death of Prof. Tyndall Eng- 

 land has lost not only one of her 

 foremost men of science, but a man who, 

 by his labors and his character, has con- 

 tributed in an eminent degree to render 

 the science of the nineteenth century 

 honorable. Some men take to science 

 as to a gainful trade, hoping that, in the 

 competition of life, it will serve their 

 turn better, perhaps, than any other 

 career they see open to them. Others 

 are led to it by a more or less amateur- 

 ish curiosity. Others again enter upon 

 the study of it from a sense of the im- 

 portance of the truths and principles it 

 unfolds and from a desire to place such 

 knowledge as they may gain at the 

 service of mankind. In the latter class 

 we must place the late Prof. Tyndall. 

 No man ever felt more fully and deeply 

 than he that the investigation of the 

 laws of Nature was a ministry, the es- 

 sential preparation for which lay in a 

 candid mind and a readiness to impart 

 as freely as one received ; and no sci- 

 entific man of our time, it may confi- 

 dently be said, has maintained a more 

 unbroken record of personal bigh-mind- 

 edness, of broad humanity, and un- 

 grudging helpfulness. 



In the various notices of him that 

 have appeared in the press since his 

 death, the leading incidents of the late 

 professor's life have been sufficiently 

 stated, and we need not on the present 

 occasion go into many biographical de- 

 tails. From his father he inherited 

 neither social position nor wealth ; but 

 what he did inherit was of far more 

 importance than either or both a sound 

 constitution, a well-developed brain, and 

 a character in which courage, independ- 

 ence, and love of truth were the pre- 

 dominant elements. The philosopher 

 Schopenhauer prefixed to the second 



edition of his principal work an elabo- 

 rate dedication to the manes of his 

 father, whom he eulogized chiefly for 

 having left him an ample provision of 

 worldly means, whereby he had been 

 enabled to devote himself to intellectual 

 labor without any anxiety for his sub- 

 sistence. " Thy presiding care," he says, 

 " hath sheltered and home me, not 

 merely through helpless childhood and 

 unregarding youth, but even in man- 

 hood and up to the present day. For 

 as thou didst bring into the world a son 

 such as I am, thou didst also make pro- 

 vision that, in a world like this, such a 

 son should be able to subsist and de- 

 velop himself." "We quote this as evinc- 

 ing a spirit the very opposite of Tyn- 

 dall's. He did not trouble himself about 

 what kind of a world he was born into, 

 but from the first resolved to take 

 things as he found them and make his 

 way in the world by dint of honesty, 

 industry, and courage. Leaving school 

 in his nineteenth year, he took service 

 on the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, and 

 in turn performed every branch of the 

 work from the most mechanical to the 

 most theoretical, and thus made con- 

 siderable progress in what were already 

 favorite studies of his geometry and 

 trigonometry. This was not sufficient, 

 however, for his active mind and stren- 

 uous disposition. A few words of coun- 

 sel given to him by an official of the 

 survey as to the best use to which to 

 put his spare time caused him to enter 

 on a systematic course of study. At 

 five o'clock next morning he was at his 

 books, and, having adopted this plan, 

 he kept it up without interruption for 

 twelve years. The salaries paid on the 

 Ordnance Survey, at least to the juniors, 

 were not large, and when Tyndall re- 

 tired from it in 1843, after four or five 

 years' service, his wages were only 



