October 11, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



467 



feel prompted to recognize publicly such 

 great services. The answer, I believe, is 

 not hard to find. We honor in Anton 

 Dohrn not only his prodigious achieve- 

 ments, but his marvelous insight that af- 

 fects us so directly as zoologists. The 

 zoological station was planned and carried 

 on with the comprehensive realization of 

 the importance of that place in the develop- 

 ment of our science which it would be 

 called upon to fill. And the more inti- 

 mately we are acquainted with the early 

 years of its history, the clearer does it 

 become that for such a work a man was 

 necessary in whom special and unusual 

 qualities were combined; sometimes even 

 partially contradictory ones. "We feel the 

 unprecedented and peculiar fitness of this 

 personality for the work. As the man who 

 accomplished this achievement undertook it 

 in the service of a great cause, perfectly 

 conscious that he must risk time, strength 

 and health, yes all he had and all he held 

 most dear — his figure takes on for us some- 

 thing of the great and heroic. But even in 

 these immaterial things we find a law of 

 compensation. "Whatever a great man by 

 untiring and unselfish devotion puts into 

 his work as the result of the love of his 

 profession, that is refiected in the labor 

 itself. That which Anton Dohrn, impelled 

 by the noblest of creative impulses, has 

 done for all of us now compels us to honor 

 him by an expression of admiration and 

 gratitude that will hallow his memory 

 through many years to come. 



No more suitable occasion to express this 

 could offer than the International Con- 

 gress. In recent years it would hardly be 

 possible to find a man more entitled to be 

 considered as an international personality, 

 and it is not necessary to explain more 

 fully than has been done the peculiar ap- 

 plicability of this term to Dohrn. Those 

 who knew him realize that he neither could 



nor would deny the race from which he 

 sprung. He had a deep love of his coun- 

 try and he cherished a feeling of loyalty, 

 thankfulness and duty to the land in which 

 his being, physical and spiritual, had its 

 roots. An excessive national pride or con- 

 ceit was entirely foreign to him. The 

 dispassionate impartiality with which in 

 quieter moments he was able to analyze 

 himself enabled him to compare the defects 

 and advantages of his own with other 

 nations. He was able, as many were not, 

 to sympathize with the feelings of others 

 for their own country. He not only un- 

 derstood, but enjoyed the traits of Italians, 

 as well as of the English and Americans. 

 He understood how to learn something 

 from all, and to many he was bound by 

 ties of intimate friendship ; and when it 

 was a question of science only, then all 

 barriers disappeared. Was it not from be- 

 ginning to end his dominant desire to real- 

 ize in the Zoological Station not only one 

 of the most favorably conditioned places 

 for work, for all biologists, but above all to 

 create a common center in which the one- 

 sidedness of isolated scientific work could 

 be equalized? How often has he said that 

 the station represented, as it were, a con- 

 tinuous zoological congress. Every one 

 who has worked long or often in Naples 

 must have felt this. Not only have num- 

 berless acquaintances and friendships 

 arisen between the investigators of differ- 

 ent countries, not only has there been an 

 interchange of views, a discussion of work 

 and of methods, but almost all who have 

 worked in the station have consciously or 

 unconsciously left behind them parting 

 gifts from their scientific possessions which, 

 gradually growing to a store of incalculable 

 value, are put at the disposal of all those 

 who follow and thus insensibly aid in the 



