[350] 



DARWIN AND HUMBOLDT. 



dustry which methodized and shaped 

 those materials for after ages. A 

 new standard of the possibilities of a 

 single life is given in what he was 

 and what he did. There was no sen- 

 escence in his experience. He passed 

 away in the midst of tasks which the 

 noon of his life bequeathed to its even- 

 ing, and which the evening did not 

 seek to escape. And when he died, 

 it seemed as if the civilized world, 

 from the Himalaya to the Andes, 

 sighed in sympathy with the going 

 down of a man who carried a universe 

 in the lobes of his brain, and who 

 counted an ally and a friend wherever 

 nature had a studedent or science a 

 home. 



One thing more. The professor 

 has told us of the service which Hum- 

 boldt rendered to humanity by free- 

 ing men from the pressure of Jew- 

 ish tradition. I accept the state- 

 ment. From all that was puerile and 

 inadequate in Jewish or Jew-Christian 

 theology he was free himself, and 

 helped to make others free. But the 

 central truth of Judaism, the truth of 

 Semitic monotheism, was as true to 

 him as to any before or since. An im- 

 pression went abroad at the time of 

 his death that Humboldt was an athe- 

 ist. We all know how loosely, how 

 unthinkingly, that term is applied. 

 That he did not receive the anthro- 

 pomorphism of the conception I can 

 well suppose. But that he rejected 

 the idea of a conscious intelligence at 

 the heart of the Avorld — that intelli- 

 gence which all his life was spent in 

 tracing — nothing shall convince me, 

 not even an unguarded saying of his 

 own. For I am persuaded that with- 

 out the belief in such an Intelligence, 

 and a purpose and a method corres- 

 ponding therewith, he would not have 

 had the heart to prosecute his in- 

 quiries. For what use or instruction, 

 or what satisfaction would there be in 



| observing and classifying material 

 phenomena, if those phenomena rep- 



| resented no order and obeyed no law ? 

 And when we say "Order," Mr. 

 Chairman, and when we say " Law," 

 we say God. And when we affirm 

 the constancy of that order and the 

 certainty of that law, we bear witness 



j of one at least of the attributes of 



j Deity, — his unchangeable veracity. 

 Those stated processes which make 

 the life of nature and which Hum- 

 boldt so loved to note, — the stars in 

 their course, the ever-recurring phases 

 of earth and sky, precession of equin- 

 oxes, succession of seasons, gravita- 

 tion, magnetism, — these are Nature's 

 comment on the text of the Spirit, 

 " God is true." And when Humboldt 

 applied the methods he had learned 

 in academic Europe and the laws 

 announced by students of nature in 

 other centuries,-- -applied these to 

 the measurement of mountains on the 

 other side of the globe, knowing them 

 to be as apt and applicable then as in 

 all past time, he unwittingly con- 

 fessed his belief in a God whose 

 " truth endureth through all genera- 

 lions." 



But if, after all, it should prove to 

 be the case — if that were possible 

 which I deny — that the greatest sci- 

 entist of modern time, in his search 

 after truth, had missed the first and 

 most essential of all truths, — the being 

 of God, — what then ? Why then I 

 should say that the man himself is the 

 most convincing proof of the truth he 



! missed. I should feel that the marvel 

 of such a mind, a wonder surpassing 

 any of those it explored, must have 

 had its adequate cause; that the finite 

 intelligence which looked creation 

 through presupposes an infinite In- 

 telligence as its origin and ground. 

 The highest mortal can only be ex- 

 plained as the product of a more than 

 mortal power. 



