JOHN MUIR 

 By Henry Fairfield Osborn 



I believe that John Muir's name is destined to be immortal 

 through his writings on mountains, forests, rivers, meadows, 

 and the sentiment of the animal and plant life they contain. I do 

 not believe anyone else has ever lived with just the same senti- 

 ment toward trees and flowers and the works of nature in gen- 

 eral as that which John Muir manifested in his life, his conver- 

 sations and his writings. 



In the splendid journey which I had the privilege of taking 

 with him to Alaska in 1896 I first became aware of his passion- 

 ate love of nature in all its forms and his reverence for it as the 

 direct handiwork of the Creator. He retained from his early re- 

 ligious training under his father this belief, which is so strongly 

 expressed in the Old Testament, that all the works of nature 

 are directly the work of God. In this sense I have never known 

 anyone whose nature philosophy was more thoroughly theistic ; 

 at the same time he was a thorough-going evolutionist, and al- 

 ways delighted in my own evolutionary studies which I de- 

 scribed to him from time to time in the course of our journey- 

 ings and conversations. 



It was in Alaska that he quoted the lines from Goethe's Wil- 

 helm Meister which inspired all his travels : 



Keep not standing fixed and rooted, 



Briskly venture, briskly roam; 

 Head and hand, where 'er thou foot it, 



And stout heart are still at home. 

 In each land the sun doth visit. 



We are gay what 'er betide, 

 To give room for wandering is it 



That the world was made so wide. 



Another sentiment of his regarding trees and flowers always 

 impressed me: that was his attributing to them a personality, 

 an individuality such as we associate with certain human beings 

 and animals, but rarely with plants. To him a tree was some- 



