DARWIN AND HUMBOLDT. 



[349] 45 



dent knows ; there is a hunger and 

 thirst which only the highest charity 

 can understand and relieve, and on 

 this solemn occasion let me say that 

 every dollar given for higher educa- 

 tion, in whatever special department 

 of knowledge, is likely to have a 

 greater influence upon the future char- 

 acter of our nation than even the 

 thousands and hundreds of thousands 

 and millions which have already been 

 spent and are daily spending to raise 

 the many to material ease and com- 

 fort. 



In the hope of this coming golden 

 age, let us rejoice together that Hum- 

 boldt's name will be permanently 

 connected with education and learning 

 in this country, with the prospects and 

 institutions of which he felt so deep 

 and so affectionate a sympathy. 



At the Evening Reception which followed 

 the Memorial Address, Professor Frederic 

 H. Hedge, of Harvard University, spoke as 

 follows: 



Mr. Chairman — It is hard gleaning 

 in a field in which Agassiz has been 

 with his sickle. But since you call 

 upon me, I will say that the thing 

 which most impressed me, as I listened 

 to the discourse this afternoon, was 

 the psychological marvel of such a na- 

 ture as Humboldt's, and the illustra- 

 tion it affords of the capabilities of 

 the human mind. Here was a man 

 whose inappeasable greed of knowl- 

 edge had appropriated all the science 

 of his time, who knew all that was 

 known in his day of things below and 

 things above. The word '-Cosmos," 

 the title he gave to his immortal 

 work, is an apt designation of the 

 mind of the author, — a mind in which 

 the universe mirrored itself in all its 

 vastness and all its minuteness, with 

 its infinitely great and its no less 

 amazing infinitely little. Where 

 shall we look for the parallel and peer 

 of such a mind? To find his match 

 we have to go back two thousand 

 years. We cannot stop at the name 

 of Laplace or of Buffon; these 

 men were great in single provinces of 

 science, but Himboldt was great in 



all. We cannot stop at Newton or 

 Leibnitz, though Newton seems to 

 have gravitated with a more absolute 

 aplomb to the truth of fact, and 

 though Leibnitz pierced with a finer 

 aperou to the heart of things. We 

 cannot stop at Bacon, whose merit is 

 not to have found, nor even to have 

 sought with sincerity, but only to 

 have taught men what and how to 

 seek. We cannot stop till we come 

 to Aristotle. And here we have an 

 even parallel. Between Hmboldt and 

 Aristotle there are, it seems to me, 

 some points of striking resemblance. 

 Both of these sages mastered and ex- 

 tendad the science of their time, — 

 with this difference in favor of the 

 Greek, that he explored the realm of 

 ideas as well as of things ; with this 

 difference in favor of the German, 

 that the science of things and their 

 relations — cosmic science — was a 

 thousand-fold more complex and dif- 

 ficult in the nineteenth century of the 

 Christian era than in the fourth of 

 the ante-Christian. Both were fortu- 

 nate in being partakers of the recent 

 stimuolus given by a great philosophic 

 movement, — that of Socrates in the 

 one case, in the other that of Kant. 

 Both were contemporaries of great 

 world-conquerors and shared the im- 

 pulse imparted to their time, — the 

 one by Alexander, the other by Na- 

 poleon the first. 



Dante called Aristotle "ilmaestro 

 di color' che sanno" — master among 

 them that know. And what better 

 title can be conferred upon Hum- 

 boldt? Master among them that 

 know, — the master savant 



Another thing which fills my soul 

 with profound admiration when I 

 think of Humboldt is the heroism of 

 his life, — a life which exceeded in 

 breadth as well as in length the ordi- 

 nary limits of mortality. I admire 

 his loyal devotion to the single aim of 

 extending the area of the human 

 mind. I admire the indomitable en- 

 terprise which ransacked the globe 

 in search of materials with which to 

 build his monumental Cosmos. I 

 admire no less the indefatigable in- 



