i AYS Robert Ingersoll in his tribute to 

 Alexander von Humboldt : 

 His life was pure, his aims lofty, his 

 learning varied and profound, and his 

 achievements vast. 



We honor him because he has ennobled our 

 race, because he has contributed as much 

 as any man, living or dead, to the real prosperity of the 

 world. We honor him because he has honored us 

 because he labored for others because he was the 

 most learned man of the most learned nation of his 

 time because he left a legacy of glory to every human 

 being. For these reasons he is honored throughout the 

 world. Millions are doing homage to his genius at this 

 moment, and millions are pronouncing his name with 

 reverence and recounting what he accomplished. 

 We associate the name of Humboldt with oceans, 

 continents, mountains, and volcanoes with towering 

 palms the wide deserts the snow-lipped craters of 

 the Andes with primeval forests and European capi- 

 tals with wilderness and universities with savages 

 and savants with the lonely rivers of unpeopled 

 wastes with peaks, pampas, steppes, and cliffs and 

 craigs with the progress of the world with every 

 science known to man, and with every star glittering 

 in the immensity of space. 



Humboldt adopted none of the soul-shrinking creeds 

 of his day ; he wasted none of his time in the stupidi- 

 ties, inanities and contradictions of theological meta- 

 physics ; he did not endeavor to harmonize the astron- 

 omy and geology of a barbarous people with the science 

 of the nineteenth century. Never, for one moment, did 

 he abandon the sublime standard of truth : he inves- 

 tigated, he studied, he thought, he separated the 

 gold from the dross in the crucible of his brain. He 



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