NOVEMBEK 1, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



669 



calmness and universal benevolence, es- 

 pecially after this Great God has manifested 

 Himself to her mind. She will sometimes 

 go about from place to place, singing 

 sweetly, and seems to be always full of joy 

 and pleasure, and no one knows for what. 

 She loves to be alone, walking in the fields 

 and groves, and seems to have some One in- 

 visible always conversing with her." 



Dante and Edwards alike in love, alike 

 in their spiritual fervor, and in their im- 

 pressive imagery, were alike in exile — both 

 were driven from their homes, both died 

 among strangers, both have been honored 

 with increasing reverence by the descend- 

 ants of those who rejected them. 



In his youth Edwards showed a note- 

 worthy proclivity toward the study of na- 

 ture. An article is extant which he wrote 

 at the age of twelve, recording his observa- 

 tions upon spiders and displaying the same 

 qualities as those of Lubbock and Maeter- 

 linck. Moreover, his undergraduate note- 

 book gives evidence that his mind was alert 

 for knowledge in other fields, and that he 

 could ask searching questions in physics, 

 including electricity, meteorology, physical 

 geography and vegetation. One who was 

 familiar with these precocious memoranda 

 remarks that if they were written, as sup- 

 posed, between the ages of fourteen and 

 sixteen, ' they indicate an intellectual 

 prodigy which has no parallel.' If he had 

 been taught to use the lens and the meter 

 as he used the lamp, he might have stood 

 among the great interpreters of nature — 

 the precursor of Franklin, Rumford and 

 Eowland. 



He was nurtured by theological dialectics, 

 and he excelled not in physics, but in meta- 

 physics, so to-day instead of honoring him 

 as a leader inliterature or science, we can 

 only acknowledge with filial reverence, his 

 wonderful influence upon the opinions and 

 characters of six generations. The laws of 

 intellectual inheritance are obscure, and the 



influences he has handed down cannot be 

 measured. It is, however, noteworthy that 

 three of his descendants occupied the pres- 

 idential chair of Yale for nearly sixty years, 

 many others have been among our teachers ; 

 indeed there are few years in our second 

 century in which the faculty has not in- 

 cluded one or more of his posterity. I have 

 read the printed verses of seven of his de- 

 scendants — no small part colored (may I 

 be pardoned for saying so) with the cerulean 

 hue of religious fervor. 



It is interesting to dwell upon the names 

 of Edwards and Eliot as men of more than 

 provincial fame, because the number of 

 Yalensians who can be regarded as con- 

 tributors to literature and science prior to 

 the Revolution is small. The historian, 

 Tyler, has taken the year 1 765 as the close 

 of the sterile period, when colonial isolation 

 was ended and American literature began 

 to be worthy of the name. Before that 

 time neither Harvard nor any of the other 

 colleges has much to speak of; yet after- 

 wards, until the close of the eighteenth 

 century, the product is almost as scanty. 

 A recent paper enumerates the texts by 

 which the youthful minds were disciplined.* 

 Although the manuals and the methods 

 were not inspiring, they encouraged dis- 

 crimination and that power which used to 

 be called ratiocination, ' generation of 

 judgments from others actually in our un- 

 derstanding.' You may say that this is 

 not ' experimental science nor literary cul- 

 ture,' and you say well. The ore, indeed, 

 may have been extracted by the Eliot pro- 

 cess, from black sand, but the Bessemer 

 process had not been invented for turning 

 iron into steel; nevertheless, we have the 

 assurance of a recent Massachusetts critic,t 

 that the highest literary activity of the 

 later eighteenth century had its origin at 

 Yale College. 



* By Professor Schwab. 

 t Barrett Wendell. 



