44 GrUYOT on Carl Bitter. 



subjective. His deeply receptive soul, always ready for new 

 impressions, was a pure mirror in which nature was reflected 

 not only in its details, but in its totality. When after having 

 worked out these impressions into a clear perception by a care- 

 ful study, he tries by speech or pen, to convey them to others, 

 it is still in that objective, concrete form which 'is before 

 his mind that Tie does it, without attempting to draw on the 

 picture the sharp and well-defined lines that a purely sub- 

 jective, logical method requires, but that nature itself has not 

 traced. While, therefore, his views and his method are en- 

 tirely original, we seek in vain in his works for a formal sys- 

 tem, an absolute idea rigorously carried out. His unflinching 

 loyalty to the truth as he sees it, not as he infers it to be, 

 seems to render such a systematization uncongenial to his 

 mind. He shrinks, indeed, from all cold, formal, and empty 

 definitions. Even his most characteristic conceptions, those 

 which constitute the spirit of his method, preserved much of 

 the nature of deep intuitions, the expression of which is 

 always highly suggestive, but often lacks that clear, logical 

 shape, which would make them easy to define, and would give 

 them immediate currency. With a mind essentially construct- 

 ive, he descends, nevertheless, with the most scrupulous care, 

 into the study of the details, and it is upon the wall-secured 

 base of facts alone, and with a sense of the true, sometimes 

 amounting almost to divination, that he builds up his broadest 

 generalizations. From what precedes it can already be in- 

 ferred that Ritter possessed, in a high degree, that noble facul- 

 ty so prominent in all great students of nature, in a Humboldt, 

 an Agassiz, that plastic imagination which gives us the power 

 to keep before the mind the true and vivid images of natural 

 objects, whether in their isolation, or by a synthetic view in 

 their natural associations, as in one great picture, and thus en- 

 ables us to perceive the relations which bind together the most 

 distant parts, more easdy and surely than a simple analytical 

 process could ever do. 



Of those moral excellences which adorn man's inmost na- 

 ture, Ritter possessed also more than the usual share. His 

 perfect purity of mind, his amiability, his unwearied kindness, 

 won him the high esteem and the good will of all. His mild- 

 ness of temper, the peace of mind which pervaded his whole 

 nature, his loving disposition, spread around him an atmos- 

 phere of peaceful happiness, which exercised a sympathetic 

 influence on those who came in close contact with him, and 

 secured him their deep affection. He was a warm and most 



