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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LII. No. 1352 



lie had a simple comfortable cottage and a 

 garden. He delighted to work, both in and 

 out of the house, and this gave him his exer- 

 cise. He was rather stout and he knew that 

 he needed exercise to keep his weight down. 

 He therefore indulged in walking, bicycling 

 and finally in motoring, and he managed to 

 keep fairly well. But, after his retirement in 

 1916, his health failed. His strength gave 

 out and his courage also. He did not dare 

 to take his car out of the garage, and his 

 walks were very short. I saw him in May, 

 just before he went to Maine, and thought 

 he seemed more like his old self. He even 

 talked of taking up his work again. It was 

 not to be. I heard nothing from him after 

 that. And then came the despatch announc- 

 ing his rather sudden and entirely unexpected 

 death. He was buried at Amherst, a place 

 that meant so much to him — where he had 

 spent his college years and for some time had 

 had a summer home. 



Ira Remsen 



WILHELM WUNDT, 1832-1920 



The death of "Wundt removes the foremost 

 figure of our academic world: a great man of 

 science, a philosopher of repute, a prolific 

 writer, a personality of extraordinary in- 

 fluence. Psychology, the science with which 

 his name is permanently connected, waa 

 fortunate both in the date of his birth and 

 in the length of his life. He came into the 

 world a full decade later than Helmholtz and 

 Virchow and Du Bois and Leuckart, Huxley 

 and Tyndall and Spencer, the standard-bear- 

 ers of science in the middle of the nineteenth 

 century; so that, while his work and theirs 

 overlapped, he still reaped the benefit of their 

 pioneer labors. His length of days and the 

 maintenance of his intellectual vigor not only 

 enabled him to round off his manifold tasks — 

 we all rejoice that the " Volkerpsychologie " 

 is done, as we all rejoiced when Spencer pub- 

 lished the final part of his " Synthetic Phi- 

 losophy " — but also gave a much-needed stabil- 

 ity to the yoimg science of experimental 

 psychology, whose name he coined and whose 

 interest lay always nearest to his heart. 



Wundt's outward life was imeventful. 

 After a half-dozen years of study, principally 

 in medicine, at the universities of Tiibingen, 

 Heidelberg and Berlin, he settled down as 

 docent (1857) and assistant professor (1864) 

 of physiology at Heidelberg, where Helmholtz 

 held the chair of physiology from 1858 to 

 1871. In 1874 he was called as professor of 

 philosophy to Zurich, and in 1875 was chosen 

 in preference to Horwioz (who nowadays 

 reads the once famous Analysenf) as pro- 

 fessor of philosophy at Leipzig. Here he re- 

 mained till the end of his life, gathering in 

 his harvest of academic honors: the rector- 

 ship of his university, the honorary citizen- 

 ship of the town, the order pour la merite, the 

 title of wirMicher Geheimrat of the kingdom 

 of Saxony. He lived the simple family life 

 of the older German tradition, and his days 

 passed with the regularity of clockwork: the 

 morning he spent on his current book or 

 paper; then came the Sprechstunde; then, 

 after the midday meal, his solitary constitu- 

 tional in the park; then the formal visit to 

 the laboratory; then the lecture; and then an 

 informal gathering in the laboratory again. 

 Wundt was an effective lecturer, and made no 

 use of notes, though he always carried in his 

 pocket a scrap of paper upon which notes had 

 been made. He was devotedly cared for by 

 his wife and, after her death, by his daughter, 

 " meiner treuen Gef ahrtin im Urwald der 

 Mythen und Marchen." His son turned some 

 years since from philology to philosophy, and 

 has written a valuable work upon Greek 

 ethics. 



Under these outward conditions, simple and 

 sheltered, Wundt carried on his varied liter- 

 ary activities. If I were asked to pick out 

 the most original and constructive items of 

 his published work, I should name in the first 

 place his " Beitrage zur Theorie der Sinnes- 

 wahmehmung" (1862), a rounded series of 

 researches upon tactual and visual perception 

 which contains in germ the doctrine of the 

 later and better known Physiologische Psycho- 

 logie. I should name, secondly, the Unter- 

 suchungen zur Mechanik der Nerven und 

 Nervencentren (1871-1876), a solid bit of 



