_In Memoriam._
_Address delivered in the Leibnitz meeting of the Academy of Sciences
on July 6, 1871._
The honourable duty has fallen on me of expressing in the name of
this Academy what it has lost in Gustav Magnus, who belonged to it
for thirty years. As a grateful pupil, as a friend, and finally as
his successor, it was a pleasure to me as well as a duty to fulfil
such a task. But I find the best part of my work already done by our
colleague Hofmann at the request of the German Chemical Society, of
which he is the President. He has solved the difficulty of giving a
picture of the life and work of Magnus in the most complete and most
charming manner. He has not only anticipated me, but he stood in much
closer and more intimate personal relation to Magnus than I did; and,
on the other hand, he is much better qualified than I to pronounce a
competent judgment on the principal side of Magnus’s activity, namely,
the chemical.
Hence what remains for me to do is greatly restricted. I shall scarcely
venture to speak as the biographer of Magnus, but only of what he was
to us and to science, to represent which is our allotted task.
His life was not indeed rich in external events and changes; it was the
peaceful life of a man who, free from the cares of outer circumstances,
first as member, then as leader of an esteemed, gifted, and amiable
family, sought and found abundant satisfaction in scientific work, in
the utilisation of scientific results for the instruction and advantage
of mankind. Heinrich Gustav Magnus was born in Berlin on May 2, 1802,
the fourth of six brothers, who by their talents have distinguished
themselves in various directions. The father, Johann Matthias, was
chief of a wealthy commercial house, whose first concern was to secure
to his children a free development of their individual capacity
and inclinations. Our departed friend showed very early a greater
inclination for the study of mathematics and natural philosophy than
for that of languages. His father arranged his instruction accordingly,
by removing him from the Werder Gymnasium and sending him to the Cauer
Private Institute, in which more attention was paid to scientific
subjects.
From 1822 to 1827 Magnus devoted himself entirely to the study of
natural science at the University of Berlin. Before carrying out his
original intention of qualifying as a professor of technology, he spent
two years with that object in travelling; he remained with Berzelius
a long time in Stockholm, then with Dulong, Thénard and Gay-Lussac
in Paris. Unusually well prepared by these means, he qualified in
the University of this place in technology, and afterwards also in
physics; he was appointed extraordinary professor in 1834, and ordinary
professor in 1845, and so distinguished himself by his scientific
labours at this time, that nine years after his habilitation, on
January 27, 1840, he was elected a member of this Academy. From 1832
until 1840 he taught physics in the Artillery and Engineering School;
and from 1850 until 1856 chemical technology in the Gewerbe Institut.
For a long time he gave the lectures in his own house, using his own
instruments, which gradually developed into the most splendid physical
collection in existence at that time, and which the State afterwards
purchased for the University. His lectures were afterwards given in the
University, and he only retained the laboratory in his own house for
his own private work and for that of his pupils.
His life was passed thus in quiet but unremitting activity; travels,
sometimes for scientific or technical studies, sometimes also in the
service of the State, and occasionally for recreation, interrupted his
work here from time to time. His experience and knowledge of business
were often in demand by the State on various commissions; among
these may be especially mentioned the part he took in the chemical
deliberations of the Agricultural Board (_Landes-Economie Collegium_),
to which he devoted much of his time; above all to the great practical
questions of agricultural chemistry.
After sixty-seven years of almost undisturbed health he was overtaken
by a painful illness towards the end of the year 1869.[1] He still
continued his lectures on physics until February 25, 1870, but during
March he was scarcely able to leave his bed, and he died on April 4.
[Footnote 1: Carcinoma recti.]
Magnus’s was a richly endowed nature, which under happy external
circumstances could develop in its own peculiar manner, and was free
to choose its activity according to its own mind. But this mind was so
governed by reason, and so filled, I might almost say, with artistic
harmony, which shunned the immoderate and impure, that he knew how
to choose the object of his work wisely, and on this account almost
always to attain it. Thus the direction and manner of Magnus’s activity
accorded so perfectly with his intellectual nature as is the case
only with the happy few among mortals. The harmonious tendency and
cultivation of his mind could be recognised in the natural grace of his
behaviour, in the cheerfulness and firmness of his disposition, in the
warm amiability of his intercourse with others. There was in all this,
much more than the mere acquisition of the outer forms of politeness
can ever reach, where they are not illuminated by a warm sympathy and
by a fine feeling for the beautiful.
Accustomed from an early age to the regulated and prudent activity of
the commercial house in which he grew up, he retained that skill in
business which he had so frequently to exercise in the administration
of the affairs of this Academy, of the philosophical faculty, and
of the various Government commissions. He retained from thence the
love of order, the tendency towards the actual, and towards what is
practically attainable, even although the chief aim of his activity
was an ideal one. He understood that the pleasant enjoyment of an
existence free from care, and intercourse with the most amiable circle
of relatives and friends, do not bring a lasting satisfaction; but
work only, and unselfish work for an ideal aim. Thus he laboured, not
for the increase of riches, but for science; not as a dilettante and
capriciously, but according to a fixed aim and indefatigably; not in
vanity, catching at striking discoveries, which might at once have made
his name celebrated. He was, on the contrary, a master of faithful,
patient, and modest work, who tests that work again and again, and
never ceases until he knows there is nothing left to be improved. But
it is also such work, which by the classical perfection of its methods,
by the accuracy and certainty of its results, merits and gains the
best and most enduring fame. There are among the labours of Magnus
masterpieces of finished perfection, especially those on the expansion
of gases by heat, and on the tension of vapours. Another master in
this field, and one of the most experienced and distinguished, namely,
Regnault of Paris, worked at these subjects at the same time with
Magnus, but without knowing of his researches. The results of both
investigators were made public almost simultaneously, and showed by
their extraordinarily close agreement with what fidelity and with what
skill both had laboured. But where differences showed themselves, they
were eventually decided in favour of Magnus.
The unselfishness with which Magnus held to the ideal aim of his
efforts is shown in quite a characteristic manner, in the way in which
he attracted younger men to scientific work, and as soon as he believed
he had discovered in them zeal and talent for such work by placing
at their disposal his apparatus, and the appliances of his private
laboratory. This was the way in which I was brought in close relation
to him, when I found myself in Berlin for the purpose of passing the
Government medical examination.
He invited me at that time (I myself would not have ventured to propose
it) to extend my experiments on fermentation and putrefaction in new
directions, and to apply other methods, which required greater means
than a young army surgeon living on his pay could provide himself with.
At that time I worked with him almost daily for about three months,
and thus gained a deep and lasting impression of his goodness, his
unselfishness, and his perfect freedom from scientific jealousy.
By such a course he not only surrendered the external advantages which
the possession of one of the richest collections of instruments would
have secured an ambitious man against competitors, but he also bore
with perfect composure the little troubles and vexations involved in
the want of skill and the hastiness with which young experimentalists
are apt to handle costly instruments. Still less could it be said that,
after the manner of the learned in other countries, he utilised the
work of the pupils for his own objects, and for the glorification of
his own name. At that time chemical laboratories were being established
according to Liebig’s precedent: of physical laboratories--which, it
may be observed, are much more difficult to organise--not one existed
at that time to my knowledge. In fact, their institution is due to
Magnus.
In such circumstances we see an essential part of the inner tendency
of the man, which must not be neglected in estimating his value: he
was not only an investigator, he was also a teacher of science in
the highest and widest sense of the word. He did not wish science to
be confined to the study and lecture-room, he desired that it should
find its way into all conditions of life. In his active interest
for technology, in his zealous participation in the work of the
Agricultural Board, this phase of his efforts was plainly reflected, as
well as in the great trouble he took in the preparation of experiments,
and in the ingenious contrivance of the apparatus required for them.
His collection of instruments, which subsequently passed into the
possession of the University, and is at present used by me as his
successor, is the most eloquent testimony of this. Everything is in
the most perfect order: if a silk-thread, a glass tube, or a cork, are
required for an experiment, one may safely depend on finding them near
the instrument. All the apparatus which he contrived is made with the
best means at his disposal, without sparing either material, or the
labour of the workman, so as to ensure the success of the experiment,
and by making it on a sufficiently large scale to render it visible
as far off as possible. I recollect very well with what wonder and
admiration we students saw him experiment, not merely because all the
experiments were successful and brilliant, but because they scarcely
seemed to occupy or to disturb his thoughts. The easy and clear flow
of his discourse went on without interruption; each experiment came in
its right place, was performed quickly, without haste or hesitation,
and was then put aside.
I have already mentioned that the valuable collection of apparatus came
into the possession of the University during his lifetime. He specially
wished that what he had collected and constructed as appliances in
his scientific work should not be scattered and estranged from the
original purpose to which he had devoted his life. With this feeling
he bequeathed to the University the rest of the apparatus of his
laboratory, as well as his very rich and valuable library, and he thus
laid the foundation for the further development of a Public Physical
Institute.
It is sufficient in these few touches to have recalled the mental
individuality of our departed friend, so far as the sources of the
direction of his activity are to be found.
Personal recollections will furnish a livelier image to all those of
you who have worked with him for the last thirty years.
If we now proceed to discuss the results of his researches it will not
be sufficient to read through and to estimate his academical writings.
I have already shown that a prominent part of his activity was directed
to his fellow-creatures. To this must be added, that he lived in an
age when natural science passed through a process of development, with
a rapidity such as never occurred before in the history of science.
But the men who belonged to such a time, and co-operated in this
development are apt to appear in wrong perspective to their successors,
since the best part of their work seems to the latter self-evident, and
scarcely worthy of mention.
It is difficult for us to realise the condition of natural science
as it existed in Germany, at least in the first twenty years of this
century. Magnus was born in 1802; I myself nineteen years later; but
when I go back to my earliest recollections, when I began to study
physics out of the school-books in my father’s possession, who was
himself taught in the Cauer Institute, I still see before me the dark
image of a series of ideas which seems now like the alchemy of the
middle ages. Of Lavoisier’s and of Humphry Davy’s revolutionising
discoveries, not much had got into the school-books. Although oxygen
was already known, yet phlogiston, the fire element, played also its
part. Chlorine was still oxygenated hydrochloric acid; potash and lime
were still elements. Invertebrate animals were divided into insects and
reptiles; and in botany we still counted stamens.
It is strange to see how late and with what hesitation Germans applied
themselves to the study of natural science in this century, whilst
they had taken so prominent a part in its earlier development. I need
only name Copernicus, Kepler, Leibnitz, and Stahl.
For we may indeed boast of our eager, fearless and unselfish love
of truth, which flinches before no authority, and is stopped by no
pretence; shuns no sacrifice and no labour, and is very modest in
its claims on worldly success. But even on this account she ever
impels us first of all to pursue the questions of principle to their
ultimate sources, and to trouble ourselves but little about what has no
connection with fundamental principles, and especially about practical
consequences and about useful applications. To this must be added
another reason, namely, that the independent mental development of
the last three hundred years, began under political conditions which
caused the chief weight to fall on theological studies. Germany has
liberated Europe from the tyranny of the ancient church; but she has
also paid a much dearer price for this freedom than other nations.
After the religious wars, she remained devastated, impoverished,
politically shattered, her boundaries spoiled, and arrogantly handed
over defenceless to her neighbours. To deduce consequences from the
new moral views, to prove them scientifically, to work them out in all
regions of intellectual life, for all this there was no time during the
storm of war; each man had to hold to his own party, every incipient
change of opinion was looked upon as treachery, and excited bitter
wrath. Owing to the Reformation, intellectual life had lost its old
stability and cohesion; everything appeared in a new light, and new
questions arose. The German mind could not be quieted with outward
uniformity; when it was not convinced and satisfied, it did not allow
its doubt to remain silent. Thus it was theology, and next to it
classical philology and philosophy, which, partly as scientific aids
of theology, partly for what they could do for the solution of the
new moral, æsthetical, and metaphysical problems, laid claim almost
exclusively to the interest of scientific culture. Hence it is clear
why the Protestant nations, as well as that part of the Catholics
which, wavering in its old faith, only remained outwardly in connection
with its church, threw itself with such zeal on philosophy. Ethical
and metaphysical problems were chiefly to be solved; the sources of
knowledge had to be critically examined, and this was done with deeper
earnestness than formerly. I need not enumerate the actual results
which the last century gained by this work. It excited soaring hopes,
and it cannot be denied that metaphysics has a dangerous attraction
for the German mind; it could not again abandon it until all its
hiding-places had been searched through and it had satisfied itself
that for the present nothing more is to be found there.
Then, in the second half of the last century, the rejuvenescent
intellectual life of the nation began to cultivate its artistic
flowers; the clumsy language transformed itself into one of the most
expressive instruments of the human mind; out of what was still the
hard, poor, and wearisome condition of civil and political life, the
results of the religious war, in which the figure of the Prussian
hero-king only now cast the first hope of a better future, to be again
followed by the misery of the Napoleonic war,--out of this joyless
existence, all sensitive minds gladly fled into the flowery land opened
out by German poetry, rivalling as it did the best poetry of all times
and of all peoples; or in the sublime aspects of philosophy they
endeavoured to sink reality in oblivion.
And the natural sciences were on the side of this real world, so
willingly overlooked. Astronomy alone could at that time offer great
and sublime prospects; in all other branches long and patient labour
was still necessary before great principles could be attained; before
these subjects could have a voice in the great questions of human
life; or before they became the powerful means of the authority of man
over the forces of nature which they have since become. The labour of
the natural philosopher seems narrow, low, and insignificant compared
with the great conceptions of the philosopher and of the poet; it was
only those natural philosophers who, like Oken, rejoiced in poetical
philosophical conceptions, who found willing auditors.
Far be it from me as a one-sided advocate of scientific interests to
blame this period of enthusiastic excitement; we have, in fact, to
thank it for the moral force which broke the Napoleonic yoke; we have
to thank it for the grand poetry which is the noblest treasure of our
nation; but the real world retains its right against every semblance,
even against the most beautiful; and individuals, as well as nations,
who wish to rise to the ripeness of manhood must learn to look reality
in the face, in order to bend it to the purpose of the mind. To flee
into an ideal world is a false resource of transient success; it only
facilitates the play of the adversary; and when knowledge only reflects
itself, it becomes unsubstantial and empty, or resolves itself into
illusions and phrases.
Against the errors of a mental tendency, which corresponded at first to
the natural soaring of a fresh youthful ambition, but which afterwards,
in the age of the Epigones of the Romantic school and of the philosophy
of Identity, fell into sentimental straining after sublimity and
inspiration, a reaction took place, and was carried out not merely in
the regions of science, but also in history, in art, and in philology.
In the last departments, too, where we deal directly with products of
activity of the human mind, and where, therefore, a construction _à
priori_ from the psychological laws seems much more possible than in
nature, it has come to be understood that we must first know the facts,
before we can establish their laws.
Gustav Magnus’s development happened during the period of this
struggle; it lay in the whole tendency of his mind, that he whose
gentle spirit usually endeavoured to reconcile antagonisms, took a
decided part in favour of pure experience as against speculation. If
he forbore to wound people, it must be confessed that he did not relax
one iota of the principle which, with sure instinct, he had recognised
as the true one; and in the most influential quarters he fought in a
twofold sense; on the one hand, because in physics it was a question as
to the foundations of the whole of natural sciences; and on the other
hand, because the University of Berlin, with its numerous students,
had long been the stronghold of speculation. He continually preached
to his pupils that no reasoning, however plausible it might seem,
avails against actual fact, and that observation and experiment must
decide; and he was always anxious that every practicable experiment
should be made which could give practical confirmation or refutation
of an assumed law. He did not limit in any way the applicability of
scientific methods in the investigation of inanimate nature, but in his
research on the gases of the blood (1837) he dealt a blow at the heart
of vitalistic theories. He led physics to the centre of organic change,
by laying a scientific foundation for a correct theory of respiration;
a foundation upon which a great number of more recent investigators
have built, and which has developed into one of the most important
chapters of physiology.
He cannot be reproached with having had too _little_ confidence in
carrying out his principle; but I must confess that I myself and many
of my companions formerly thought that Magnus carried his distrust of
speculation too far, especially in relation to mathematical physics.
He had probably never dipped very deep in the latter subject, and that
strengthened our doubts. Yet when we look around us from the standpoint
which science has now attained, it must be confessed that his
distrust of the mathematical physics of that date was not unfounded.
At that time no separation had been distinctly made as to what was
empirical matter of fact, what mere verbal definition, and what only
hypothesis. The vague mixture of these elements which formed the basis
of calculation was put forth as axioms of metaphysical necessity,
and postulated a similar kind of necessity for the results. I need
only recall to you the great part which hypotheses as to the atomic
structure of bodies played in mathematical physics during the first
half of this century, whilst as good as nothing was known of atoms;
and, for instance, hardly anything was known of the extraordinary
influence which heat has on molecular forces. We now know that the
expansive force of gases depends on motion due to heat; at that period
most physicists regarded heat as imponderable matter.
In reference to atoms in molecular physics, Sir W. Thomson says, with
much weight, that their assumption can explain no property of the
body which has not previously been attributed to the atoms. Whilst
assenting to this opinion, I would in no way express myself against
the existence of atoms, but only against the endeavour to deduce the
principles of theoretical physics from purely hypothetical assumptions
as to the atomic structure of bodies. We now know that many of these
hypotheses, which found favour in their day, far overshot the mark.
Mathematical physics has acquired an entirely different character
under the hands of Gauss, of F. E. Neumann and their pupils, among the
Germans; as well as from those mathematicians who in England followed
Faraday’s lead, Stokes, W. Thomson, and Clerk-Maxwell. It is now
understood that mathematical physics is a purely experimental science;
that it has no other principles to follow than those of experimental
physics. In our immediate experience we find bodies variously formed
and constituted; only with such can we make our observations and
experiments. Their actions are made up of the actions which each of
their parts contributes to the sum of the whole; and hence, if we wish
to know the simplest and most general law of the action of masses and
substances found in nature upon one another, and if we wish to divest
these laws of the accidents of form, magnitude, and position of the
bodies concerned, we must go back to the laws of action of the smallest
particles, or, as mathematicians designate it, the elementary volume.
But these are not, like the atoms, disparate and heterogeneous, but
continuous and homogeneous.
The characteristic properties of the elementary volumes of different
bodies are to be found experimentally, either directly, where the
knowledge of the sum is sufficient to discover the constituents, or
hypothetically, where the calculated sum of effects in the greatest
possible number of different cases must be compared with actual fact by
observation and by experiment. It is thus admitted that mathematical
physics only investigates the laws of action of the elements of a body
independently of the accidents of form, in a purely empirical manner,
and is therefore just as much under the control of experience as what
are called experimental physics. In principle they are not at all
different, and the former only continues the function of the latter,
in order to arrive at still simpler and still more general laws of
phenomena.
It cannot be doubted that this analytical tendency of physical inquiry
has assumed another character; that it has just cast off that which was
the means of placing Magnus towards it in some degree of antagonism. He
tried to maintain, at least in former years, that the business of the
mathematical and that of the experimental physicist are quite distinct
from one another; that a young man who wishes to pursue physics would
have to decide between the two. It appears to me, on the contrary, that
the conviction is constantly gaining ground, that in the present more
advanced state of science those only can experimentalise profitably
who have a clear-sighted knowledge of theory, and know how to propound
and pursue the right questions; and, on the other hand, only those can
theorise with advantage who have great practice in experiments. The
discovery of spectrum analysis is the most brilliant example within our
recollection of such an interpenetration of theoretical knowledge and
experimental skill.
I am not aware whether Magnus subsequently expressed other views as to
the relation of experimental and mathematical physics. In any case,
those who regard his former desertion of mathematical physics as a
reaction against the misuse of speculation carried too far, must also
admit that in the older mathematical physics there are many reasons
for this dislike, and that, on the other hand, he received with the
greatest pleasure the results which Kirchhoff, Sir W. Thomson, and
others had developed out of new facts from theoretical starting-points.
I may here be permitted to adduce my own experience. My researches were
mostly developed in a manner against which Magnus tried to guard; yet I
never found in him any but the most willing and friendly recognition.
It is, however, natural that every one, relying upon his own
experience, should recommend to others, as most beneficial, the way
which best suits his own nature, and by which he has made the quickest
progress. And if we are all of the same opinion that the task of
science is to find the _Laws of Facts_, then each one may be left free
either to plunge into facts, and to search where he might come upon
traces of laws still unknown, or from laws already known to search out
the points where new facts are to be discovered. But just as we all,
like Magnus, are opposed to the theorist who holds it unnecessary to
prove experimentally the hypothetical results which seem axioms to him,
so would Magnus--as his works decidedly show--pronounce with us against
that kind of excessive empiricism which sets out to discover facts
which fit to no rule, and which also try carefully to avoid a law, or a
possible connection between newly discovered facts.
It must here be mentioned that Faraday, another great physicist, worked
in England exactly in the same direction, and with the same object;
to whom, on that account, Magnus was bound by the heartiest sympathy.
With Faraday, the antagonism to the physical theories hitherto held,
which treated of atoms and forces acting at a distance, was even more
pronounced than with Magnus.
We must, moreover, admit that Magnus mostly worked with success on
problems which seemed specially adapted to mathematical treatment;
as, for instance, his research on the deviation of rotating shot
fired from rifled guns; also his paper on the form of jets of water
and their resolution into drops. In the first, he proved, by a very
cleverly arranged experiment, how the resistance of the air, acting on
the ball from below, must deflect it sideways as a rotating body, in a
direction depending on that of the rotation; and how, in consequence
of this, the trajectory is deflected in the same direction. In the
second treatise, he investigated the different forms of jets of water,
how they are partly changed by the form of the aperture through which
they flow, partly in consequence of the manner in which they flow
to it; and how their resolution into drops is caused by external
agitation. He applied the principle of the stroboscopic disk in
observing the phenomena, by looking at the jet through small slits in
a rotating disk. He grouped the various phenomena with peculiar tact,
so that those among them which are alike were easily seen, and one
elucidated the other. And if a final mechanical explanation is not
always attained, yet the reason for a great number of characteristic
features of the individual phenomena is plain. In this respect many of
his researches--I might specially commend those on the efflux of jets
of water--are excellent models of what Goethe theoretically advanced,
and in his physical labours endeavoured to accomplish, though with only
partial success.
But even where Magnus from his standpoint, and armed with the
knowledge of his time, exerted himself in vain to seize the kernel
of the solution of a difficult question, a host of new and valuable
facts is always brought to light. Thus in his research on the
thermo-electric battery, where he correctly saw that a critical
question was to be solved, and at the conclusion declared: ‘When I
commenced the experiment just described, I confidently hoped to find
that thermo-electrical currents are due to a motion of heat.’ In this
sense he investigated the cases in which the thermo-electrical circuit
consisted of a single metal in which there were alternately hard
portions, and such as had been softened by heat; or those it which
the parts in contact had very different temperatures. He was convinced
that the thermo-electrical current was due neither to the radiating
power, nor to the conductivity for heat, using this expression in its
ordinary meaning, and he had to content himself with the obviously
imperfect explanation that two pieces of the same metal at different
temperatures acted like dissimilar conductors, which like liquids do
not fall in with the potential series. The solution was first furnished
by the two general laws of the mechanical theory of heat. Magnus’s hope
was not unfulfilled. Sir W. Thomson discovered that alterations in the
conductivity for heat, though such as were produced by the electrical
current itself, were indeed the sources of the current.
It is the nature of the scientific direction which Magnus pursued in
his researches, that they build many a stone into the great fabric of
science, which give it an ever broader support, and an ever growing
height, without its appearing to a fresh observer as a special and
distinctive work due to the sole exertion of any one scientific man.
If we wish to explain the importance of each stone for its special
place, how difficult to procure it, and how skilfully it was worked, we
must presuppose either that the hearer knows the entire history of the
building, or we must explain it to him, by which more time is lost than
I can now claim.
Thus it is with Magnus’s researches. Wherever he has attacked, he has
brought out a host of new and often remarkable facts; he has carefully
and accurately observed them, and he has brought them in connection
with the great fabric of science. He has, moreover, bequeathed
to science a great number of ingenious and carefully devised new
methods, as instruments with which future generations will continue to
discover hidden veins of the noble metal of everlasting laws in the
apparently waste and wild chaos of accident. Magnus’s name will always
be mentioned in the first line of those on whose labours the proud
edifice of the science of Nature reposes; of the science which has so
thoroughly remodelled the life of modern humanity by its intellectual
influence, as well as by its having subjugated the forces of nature to
the dominion of the mind.
I have only spoken of Magnus’s physical labours, and have only
mentioned those which seemed to me characteristic for his
individuality. But the number of his researches is very great, and
they extend over wider regions than could now be grasped by any single
inquirer. He began as a chemist, but even then he inclined to those
cases which showed remarkable physical conditions; he was afterwards
exclusively a physicist. But parallel with this he cultivated a very
extended study of technology, which of itself would alone have occupied
a man’s life.
He has departed, after a rich life and a fruitful activity. The old
law that no man’s life is free from pain must have been applied to him
also; and yet his life seems to have been especially happy. He had
what men generally desire most; but he knew how to ennoble external
fortune by putting it at the service of unselfish objects. To him was
granted, what is dearest to the mind of a noble spirit, to dwell in
the centre of an affectionate family, and in a circle of faithful and
distinguished friends. But I count his rarest happiness to be that he
could work in pure enthusiasm for an ideal principle; and that he saw
the cause which he served go on victoriously, and develop to unheard of
wealth and ever wider activity.
And in conclusion we must add, in so far as thoughtfulness, purity of
intention, moral and intellectual tact, modesty, and true humanity can
rule over the caprices of fortune and of man, in so far was Magnus
the artificer of his own fortune; one of the most satisfactory and
contented natures, who secure the love and favour of men, who with sure
inspiration know how to find the right place for their activity; and
of whom we may say, envious fact does not embitter their successes,
for, working for pure objects and with pure wishes, they would find
contentment even without external successes.