Tyndall was of high descent and lowly birth. His father was a
member of the Irish Constabulary, and there were intervals when the
boy's mother took in washing. But back of this the constable swore i'
faith, when the ale was right, that he was descended from an Irish King,
and probably this is true, for most Irishmen are, and acknowledge it
themselves.
The father of our Tyndall spelled his name Tyndale, and traced a direct
relationship to William Tyndale, who declared he would place a copy of
the English Bible in the hands of every plowboy in the British Isles,
and pretty nearly made good his vow. William Tyndale paid for his
privileges, however. He was arrested, given an opportunity to run away,
but wouldn't; then he was exiled. Finally he was incarcerated in a
dungeon of the Castle Vilvoorden.
His cell was beneath the level of the ground, so was cold and damp and
dark. He petitioned the governor of the prison for a coat to keep him
warm and a candle by which he could read. "We'll give you both light and
heat, pretty soon," was the reply.
And they did. They led Tyndale out under the blue sky and tied him to a
stake set in the ground. Around his feet they piled brush, and also all
of his books and papers that they could find.
A chain was put around his neck and hooked tight to the post. Then the
fagots were piled high, and the fire was lighted.
"He was not burned to death," argued one of the priests who was present;
"he was not burned to death. He just drew up his feet and hanged himself
in the chain, and so was choked: he was that stubborn!" The father of
John Tyndall was an Orangeman and had in a glass case a bit of the flag
carried at the Battle of the Boyne.
It is believed, with reason, that the original flag had in it about ten
thousand square yards of material. Tyndale the Orangeman was of so
uncompromising a type that he occasionally arrested Catholics on general
principles, like the Irishman who beat the Jew under the mistaken idea
that he had something to do with crucifying "Our Savior." "But that was
two thousand years ago," protested the Jew. "Niver moind; I just heard
av it--take that and that!"
Zeal not wisely directed is a true Irish trait. It will not do to say
that the Irish have a monopoly on stupidity, yet there have been times
when I thought they nearly cornered the market. I once had charge of a
gang of green Irishmen at a lumber-camp.
I started a night-school for their benefit, as their schooling had
stopped at subtraction. One evening they got it into their heads that I
was an atheist. Things began to come my way. I concluded discretion was
the better part of valor, and so took to the woods, literally. They
followed me for a mile, and then gave up the chase. On the way home they
met a man who spoke ill of me, and they fell upon him and nearly pounded
his life out.
I never had to lick any of my gang: they looked after this themselves.
On pay-nights they all got drunk and fell upon each other--broken noses
and black eyes were quite popular. Father Driscoll used to come around
nearly every month and have them all sign the pledge.
That story about the Irishman who ate the rind of the watermelon "and
threw the inside away," is true. That is just what the Irish do. Very
often they are not able to distinguish good from bad, kindness from
wrong, love from hate. Ireland has all the freedom she can use or
deserves, just as we all have. What would Ireland do with freedom if she
had it? Hate for England keeps peace at home. Home rule would mean home
rough-house--and a most beautiful argument it would be, enforced with
shillalah logic. The spirit of Donnybrook Fair is there today as much as
ever, and wherever you see a head, hit it, would be home rule.
Donnybrook is a condition of mind.
If England really had a grudge against Ireland and wanted to get even,
she could not do better than to set her adrift.
But then the Irish impulsiveness sometimes leads to good, else how could
we account for such men as O'Connor, Parnell, John Tyndall, Burke,
Goldsmith, Sheridan, Arthur Wellesley and all the other Irish poets,
orators and thinkers who have made us vibrate with our kind?
Transplanted weeds produce our finest flowers.
The parents of Tyndall were intent on giving their boy an education. And
to them, the act of committing things to memory was education. William
Tyndale gave the Bible to the people; John Tyndall would force it upon
them. The "Book of Martyrs," the sermons of Jeremy Taylor, and the
Bible, little John came to know by heart. And he grew to have a fine
distaste for all. Once, when nearly a man grown, he had the temerity to
argue with his father that the Bible might be better appreciated, if a
penalty were not placed upon disbelief in its divine origin. A cuff on
the ear was the answer, and John was given until sundown to apologize.
He did not apologize.
And young Tyndale then vowed he would change his name to Tyndall and
forever separate himself from a person whose religion was so largely
mixed with brutality. But yet John Tyndale was not a bad man. He had
intellect far above the average of his neighbors. He had the courage of
his convictions. His son had the courage of his lack of convictions.
And the early drilling in the Bible was a good thing for young Tyndall.
Bible legend and allusion color the English language, and any man who
does not know his Bible well, can never hope to speak or write English
with grace and fluency. Tyndall always knew and acknowledged his
indebtedness to his parents, and he also knew that his salvation
depended upon getting away from and beyond the narrow confines of their
beliefs and habits. Because a thing helps you in a certain period of
your education is no reason why you should feed upon it forevermore.
This way lies arrested development.
Life, like heat, is a mode of motion, and progress consists in
discarding a good thing as soon as you have found a better.
* * * * *
Occasionally Herbert Spencer used to spend a Sunday afternoon with the
Carlyles at their modest home in Chelsea. At such times Jeannie Welsh
would usually manage to pilot the conversational craft along smooth
waters; but if she were not present, hot arguments would follow, and
finally a point would be reached where Carlyle and Spencer would simply
sit and glare at each other.
"After such scenes I always thought less of two persons, Carlyle and
myself," said Spencer; "and so for many years I very cautiously avoided
Cheyne Row." Then there was another man Spencer avoided, although for a
different reason; this individual was John Tyndall.
On the death of Tyndall, Spencer wrote:
"There has just died the greatest teacher of modern times: a man who
stimulated thought in old and young, every one he met, as no one else I
ever knew did. Once we went together for a much-needed rest to the Lake
District. Gossip, which has its advantages in that it can be carried on
with no tax on one's intellectual powers, had no part in our
conversation. The discussion of great themes began at once wherever
Tyndall was.
"The atmosphere of the man was intensely stimulating: everybody seemed
to become great and wise and good in his presence.
"We walked on the shores of Windermere, climbed Rydal Mount, rowed
across Lake Grasmere (leaving our names on the visitors' list), and all
the time we dwelt upon high Olympus and talked.
"But, alas! Tyndall's vivacity undid me: two days of his company, with
two sleepless nights, and I fled him as I would a pestilence."
But Carlyle growled out one thing in Spencer's presence which Spencer
often quoted. "If I had my own way," said Carlyle, "I would send the
sons of poor men to college, and the sons of rich men I would set to
work."
Manual labor in right proportion means mental development. Too much hoe
may slant the brow, but hoe in proper proportion develops the
cerebellum.
In the past we have had one set of men do all the work, and another set
had all the culture: one hoes and another thirsts. There are whole areas
of brain-cells which are evolved only through the efforts of hand and
eye, for it is the mind at last that directs all our energies. The
development of brain and body go together--manual work is brain-work.
Too much brain-work is just as bad as too much toil; the misuse of the
pen carries just as severe a penalty as the misuse of the hoe. And it is
a great satisfaction to realize that the thinking world has reached a
point where these propositions do not have to be proven.
There was a time when Spencer regretted that he had not been sent to
college, instead of being set to work. But later he came to regard his
experience as a practical engineer and surveyor as a very precious and
necessary part of his education.
John Tyndall and Alfred Russel Wallace had an experience almost
identical. In childhood John attended the village school for six months
of the year, and the rest of the time helped his parents, as children of
poor people do. When nineteen he went to work carrying a chain in a
surveying corps. Steady attention to the business in hand brought its
sure reward, and in a few years he had charge of the squad, and was
given the duty of making maps and working out complex calculations in
engineering.
In mathematics he especially excelled. Five years in the employ of the
Irish Ordnance Survey and three years in practical railroad-building,
and Tyndall got the Socialistic bee in his bonnet. He resigned a good
position to take part in bringing about the millennium.
That he helped the old world along toward the ideal there is no doubt;
but Tyndall is dead and Jerusalem is not yet. When the rule of the
barons was broken, and the stage of individualism or competition was
ushered in, men said, "Lo! The time is at hand and now is." But it was
not. Socialism is coming, by slow degrees, imperceptibly almost as the
growing of Spring flowers that push their way from the damp, dark earth
into the sunlight. And after Socialism, what? Perhaps the millennium
will still be a long way off.
In Eighteen Hundred Forty-seven, when Tyndall was twenty-seven years
old, Robert Owen, one of the greatest practical men the world has ever
seen, cried aloud, "The time is at hand!"
Owen was an enthusiast: all great men are. He had risen from the ranks
by the absolute force of his great untiring, restless and loving spirit.
From a day laborer in a cotton-mill he had become principal owner of a
plant that supported five thousand people.
Owen saw the difference between joyless labor and joyful work. His mills
were cleanly, orderly, sanitary, and surrounded with lawns, trees and
shrubbery. He was the first man in England to establish kindergartens,
and this he did at his own expense for the benefit of his helpers. He
established libraries, clubs, swimming-pools, night-schools,
lecture-courses. And all this time his business prospered.
To the average man it is a miracle how any one individual could bear the
heaviest business burdens and still do what Robert Owen did.
Robert Owen had vitality plus: he was a gourmet for work. William Morris
was just such a man, only with a bias for art; but both Owen and Morris
had the intensity and impetus which get the thing done while common
folks are thinking about it.
Owen was familiar with every detail of his vast business, and he was an
expert in finance. Like Napoleon he said: "The finances? I will arrange
them."
Robert Owen erected schoolhouses, laid out gardens, built mills,
constructed tenements, traveled, lectured, and wrote books. His
enthusiasm was contagious. He was never sick--he could not spare the
time--and a doctor once said, "If Robert Owen ever dies, it will be
through too much Robert Owen."
Owen went over to Dublin on one of his tours, and lectured on the ideal
life, which to him was Socialism, "each for all and all for each."
Fourier, the dreamer, supplied a good deal of the argument, but Robert
Owen did the thing. Socialism always catches these two classes, doers
and dreamers, workers and drones, honest men and rogues, those with a
desire to give and those with a lust to get.
Among others who heard Owen speak at Dublin was the young Irish
engineer, John Tyndall. Tyndall was the type of man that must be common
before we can have Socialism. There was not a lazy hair in his head;
aye, nor a selfish one, either. He had a tender heart, a receptive brain
and the spirit of obedience, the spirit that gives all without counting
the cost, the spirit that harkens to the God within. And need I say that
the person who gives all, gets all! The economics of God are very
simple: We receive only that which we give. The only love we keep is the
love we give away.
These are very old truths--I did not discover nor invent them--they are
not covered by copyright: "Cast thy bread upon the waters."
John Tyndall was melted by Owen's passionate appeal of each for all and
all for each. To live for humanity seemed the one desirable thing. His
loving Irish heart was melted. He sought Owen out at his hotel, and they
talked, talked till three o'clock in the morning.
Owen was a judge of men; his success depended upon this one thing, as
that of every successful business must. He saw that Tyndall was a rare
soul and nearly fulfilled his definition of a gentleman. Tyndall had
hope, faith and splendid courage; but best of all, he had that hunger
for truth which classes him forever among the sacred few.
During his work out of doors on surveying trips he had studied the
strata; gotten on good terms with birds, bugs and bees; he knew the
flowers and weeds, and loved all the animate things of Nature, so that
he recognized their kinship to himself, and he hesitated to kill or
destroy.
Education is a matter of desire, and a man like Tyndall is getting an
education wherever he is. All is grist that comes to his mill.
Robert Owen had but recently started "Queenswood College" in Hampshire,
and nothing would do but Tyndall should go there as a teacher of
science.
"Is he a skilled and educated teacher?" some one asked Owen. "Better
than that," replied Owen; "he is a regular firebrand of enthusiasm."
And so Tyndall resigned his position with the railroad and moved over to
England, taking up his home at "Harmony Hall."
Harmony Hall was a beautiful brick building with the letters C. M.
carved on the cornerstone in recognition of the Commencement of the
Millennium. The pupils were mostly workers in the Owen mills who had
shown some special aptitude for education. The pupils and teachers all
worked at manual labor a certain number of hours daily. There was a
delightful feeling of comradeship about the institution. Tyndall was
happy in his work.
He gave lectures on everything, and taught the things that no one else
could teach, and of course he got more out of the lessons than any of
the scholars.
But after a few months' experience with the ideal life, Tyndall had
commonsense enough to see that Harmony Hall, instead of being the
spontaneous expression of the people who shared its blessings, was
really a charity maintained by one Robert Owen. It was a beneficent
autocracy, a sample of one-man power, beautifully expressed.
Robert Owen planned it, built it, directed it and made good any
financial deficit. Instead of Socialism it was a kindly despotism. A few
of the scholars did their level best to help themselves and help the
place, but the rest didn't think and didn't care. They were passengers
who enjoyed the cushioned seats. A few, while partaking of the
privileges of the place, denounced it.
"You can not educate people who do not want to be educated," said
Tyndall. The value of an education lies in the struggle to get it. Do
too much for people, and they will do nothing for themselves.
Many of the students at Harmony Hall had been sent there by Owen,
because he, in the greatness of his heart and the blindness of his zeal,
thought they needed education. They may have needed it; but they did not
want it: ease was their aim.
The indifference and ingratitude Robert Owen met with did not discourage
him: it only gave him an occasional pause. He thought that the bad
example of English society was too close to his experiments: it vitiated
the atmosphere.
So he came over to America and founded the town of New Harmony, Indiana.
The fine solid buildings he erected in Posey County, then a wilderness,
are still there.
As for the most romantic and interesting history of New Harmony, Robert
Owen and his socialistic experiments, I must refer the gentle reader to
the Encyclopedia Britannica, a work I have found very useful in the
course of making my original researches.
After a year at Harmony Hall, Tyndall saw that he would have to get out
or else become a victim of arrested development, through too much
acceptance of a strong man's bounty. "You can not afford to accept
anything for nothing," he said. Life at Harmony Hall to him was very
much like life in a monastery, to which stricken men flee when the old
world seems too much for them. "When all the people live the ideal life,
I'll live it; but until then I'm only one of the great many strugglers."
Besides, he felt that in missing university training he had dropped
something out of his life. Now he would go to Germany and see for
himself what he had missed.
While railroading he had saved up nearly four hundred pounds. This money
he had offered at one time to invest in shares in the Owen mills. But
Robert Owen said, "Wait two years and then see how you feel!"
Robert Owen was not a financial exploiter. Tyndall may have differed
with him in a philosophic way; but they never ceased to honor and
respect each other.
And so John Tyndall bade the ideal life good-by, and went out into the
stress, strife and struggle, resolved to spend his two thousand dollars
in bettering his education, and then to start life anew.
* * * * *
Robert Owen had been over to America and had met Emerson, and very
naturally caught it. When he returned home he gave young Tyndall a copy
of Emerson's first book, the "Essay on Nature," published anonymously.
Tyndall read and re-read the book, and read it aloud to others and spoke
of it as a "message from the gods."
He also read every word that Carlyle put in print. It was Carlyle who
introduced him to German philosophy and German literature, and fired him
with a desire to see for himself what Germany was doing.
Germany had still another mystic tie that drew him thitherward. It was
at Marburg, Germany, that his illustrious namesake had published his
translation of the Bible.
At Marburg there was a University, small, 't was true, but its
simplicity and the cheapness of living there were recommendations. So to
Marburg he went. Tyndall found lodgings in a little street called
"Heretics' Row." Possibly there be people who think that Tyndall's
taking a room in such a street was chance, too. Chance is natural law
not understood.
Marburg is a very lovely little town that clings amid a forest of trees
to the rocky hillside overlooking the River Lahn. Tyndall was very happy
at Marburg, and at times very miserable. The beauty of the place
appealed to him. He was a climber by nature, and the hills were a
continual temptation.
But the language was new; and before this his work had all been of a
practical kind. College seems small and trivial after you have been in
the actual world of affairs. But Tyndall did not give up. He rose every
morning at six, took his cold bath, dressed and ran up the hill half a
mile and back. He breakfasted with the family, that he might talk
German. Then he dived into differential calculus and philosophical
abstrusities. He was not sent to college: he went. And he made college
give up all it had. On the wall of his room, as a sort of ornamental
frieze in charcoal, he wrote this from Emerson: "High knowledge and
great strength are within the reach of every man who unflinchingly
enacts his best."
Down in the town was a bronze bust of a man who wrote for it the
following inscription: "This is the face of a man who has struggled
energetically."
One might almost imagine that Hawthorne had received from Tyndall the
hint which evolved itself into that fine story, "The Great Stone Face."
The bust just mentioned, attracted John Tyndall for another reason:
Carlyle had written of the man it symboled: "Reader, to thee, thyself,
even now, he has one counsel to give, the secret of his whole poetic
alchemy. Think of living! Thy life, wert thou the pitifullest of all the
sons of earth, is no idle dream, but a solemn reality. It is thine own;
it is all thou hast with which to front eternity. Work, then, even as he
has done--like a star, unhasting and unresting."
* * * * *
At Marburg, Tyndall was on good terms with the great Bunsen, and used to
act as his assistant in making practical chemical experiments before his
classes.
These amazing things done by chemists in public are seldom of much value
beyond giving a thrill to visitors who would otherwise drowse; it is
like humor in an oration: it opens up the mental pores.
Alexander Humboldt once attended a Bunsen lecture at Marburg and
complimented Tyndall by saying, "When I take up sleight-of-hand work,
consider yourself engaged as my first helper." Tyndall's way of standing
with his back to the audience, shutting off the view of Bunsen's hands
while he was getting ready to make an artificial peal of thunder, made
Humboldt laugh heartily.
Humboldt thought so well of the young man who spoke German with an Irish
accent, that he presented him with an inscribed copy of one of his
books. The volume was a most valuable one, for Humboldt published only
in deluxe, limited editions, and Tyndall was so overcome that all he
could say was, "I'll do as much for you some day." Not long after this,
through loaning money to a fellow student, Tyndall found himself sadly
in need of funds, and borrowed two pounds on the book from an 'Ebrew
Jew.
That night, he dreamed that Humboldt found the volume in a secondhand
store. In the morning, Tyndall was waiting for the pawnbroker to open
his shop to get the book back ere the offense was discovered.
Heinrich Heine once inscribed a volume of his poems to a friend, and
afterward discovered the volume on the counter of a secondhand dealer.
He thereupon haggled with the bookman, bought the book and beneath his
first inscription wrote, "With the renewed regards of H. Heine." He then
sent the volume for the second time to his friend. 'T is possible that
Tyndall had heard of this.
In Eighteen Hundred Fifty, when Tyndall was thirty years of age, he
visited London, and of course went to the British Institution. There he
met Faraday for the first time and was welcomed by him.
The British Institution consists of a laboratory, a museum and a
lecture-hall, and its object is scientific research. It began in a very
simple way in one room and now occupies several buildings.
It was founded by Benjamin Thompson, an American, and so it was but
proper that its sister concern, the Smithsonian Institution, should have
been founded by an Englishman.
Sir Humphry Davy on being asked, "What is your greatest discovery?"
replied, "Michael Faraday." But this was a mere pleasantry, the truth
being that it was Michael Faraday who discovered Sir Humphry Davy.
Faraday was a bookbinder's apprentice, a fact that should interest all
good Roycrofters.
Evenings, when Sir Humphry Davy lectured at the British Institution,
the young bookbinder was there. After the lecture he would go home and
write out what he had heard, with a few ideas of his own added. For be
it known, taking notes at a lecture is a bad habit--good reporters carry
no notebooks.
After a year Faraday sent a bundle of his impressions and criticisms to
Sir Humphry Davy anonymously. Great men seldom read manuscript that is
sent to them unless it refers to themselves. At the next lecture, Sir
Humphry began by reading from Faraday's notes, and begged that if the
writer were present, he would make himself known at the close of the
address.
From this was to ripen a love like that of father and son. Every man who
builds up such a work as did Sir Humphry Davy is appalled, when he finds
Time furrowing his face and whitening his hair, to think how few indeed
there are who can step in and carry his work on after he is gone.
The love of Davy for the young bookbinder was almost feverish: he
clutched at this bright, impressionable and intent young man who entered
so into the heart and soul of science; nothing would do but he must
become his assistant. "Give up all and follow me!" And Faraday did.
Something of the same feeling must have swept over Faraday after his
work of twenty-five years as director of the British Institution, when
John Tyndall appeared, tall, thin, bronzed, animated, quoting Bunsen
and Humboldt with an Irish accent.
And so in time Tyndall became assistant to Faraday, then lecturer in
natural history; and when Faraday died, Tyndall, by popular acclaim, was
made Fullerian Lecturer and took Faraday's place. This was to be his
life-work, and it so placed him before the world that all he said or did
had a wide significance and an extended influence.
* * * * *
Tyndall was always a most intrepid mountain-climber. The Alps lured him
like the song of the Lorelei, and the wonder was that his body was not
left in some mountain crevasse, "the most beautiful and poetic of all
burials," he once said.
But for him this was not to be, for Fate is fond of irony. The only man
who ever braved the full dangers of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado was
killed by a suburban train in Chicago while on his wedding-tour. Most
bad men die in bed, tenderly cared for by trained nurses in white caps
and big aprons.
Tyndall climbed to the summit of the Matterhorn, ascended the so-called
inaccessible peak of the Weisshorn, scaled Mont Blanc three times, and
once was caught in an avalanche, riding toward death at the rate of a
mile a minute. Yet he passed away from an overdose, or a wrong dose, of
medicine given him through mistake, by the hands of the woman he loved
most.
At one time Tyndall attempted to swim a mountain-torrent; the stream, as
if angry at his Irish assurance, tossed him against the rocks, brought
him back in fierce eddies, and again and again threw him against a solid
face of stone. When he was rescued he was a mass of bruises, but
fortunately no bones were broken. It was some days before he could get
out, and in his sorry plight, bandaged so his face was scarcely visible,
Spencer found him. "Herbert, do you believe in the actuality of
matter?" was John's first question.
Both Tyndall and Huxley made application to the University of Toronto
for positions as teachers of science; but Toronto looked askance, as all
pioneer people do, at men whose college careers have been mostly
confined to giving college absent treatment.
Herbert Spencer avowed again and again that Tyndall was the greatest
teacher he ever knew or heard of, inspiring the pupil to discover for
himself, to do, to become, rather than imparting prosy facts of doubtful
pith and moment. But Herbert Spencer, not being eligible to join a
university club himself, was possibly not competent to judge.
Anyway, England was not so finical as Canada, and so she gained what
Canada lost.
* * * * *
Tyndall paid a visit to the United States in the year Eighteen Hundred
Seventy-two, and lectured in most of the principal cities, and at all
the great colleges. He was a most fascinating speaker, fluent, direct,
easy, and his whole discourse was well seasoned with humor.
Whenever he spoke, the auditorium was taxed to its utmost, and his
reception was very cordial, even in colleges that were considered
exceedingly orthodox.
Possibly, some good people who invited him to speak did not know it was
loaded; and so his earnest words in praise of Darwin and the doctrine of
evolution, occasionally came like unto a rumble of his own artificial
thunder. "I speak what I think is truth; but of course, when I express
ungracious facts I try to do so in what will be regarded as not a nasty
manner," said Tyndall, thus using that pet English word in a rather
pleasing way.
In his statement that the prayer of persistent effort is the only prayer
that is ever answered, he met with a direct challenge at Oberlin. This
gave rise to what, at the time, created quite a dust in the theological
road, and evolved "The Tyndall Prayer Test."
Tyndall proposed that one hundred clergymen be delegated to pray for the
patients in any certain ward of Bellevue Hospital. If, after a year's
trial, there was a marked decrease in mortality in that ward, as
compared with previous records, we might then conclude that prayer was
efficacious, otherwise not.
One good clergyman in Pittsburgh offered publicly to debate "Darwinism"
with Tyndall, but beyond a little scattered shrapnel of this sort, the
lecture-tour was a great success. It netted just thirteen thousand
dollars, the whole amount of which Tyndall generously donated as a fund
to be used for the advancement of natural science in America.
In Eighteen Hundred Eighty-five, this fund had increased to thirty-two
thousand dollars, and was divided into three equal parts and presented
to Columbia, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. The fund was
still further increased by others who followed Professor Tyndall's
example, and Columbia, from her share of the Tyndall fund, I am told now
supports two foreign scholarships for the benefit of students who show a
special aptitude in scientific research. Professor James of Harvard once
said: "The impetus to popular scientific study caused by Professor
Tyndall's lectures in the United States was most helpful and fortunate.
Speaking but for myself, I know I am a different man and a better man,
for having heard and known John Tyndall."
* * * * *
When John Tyndall died, in the year Eighteen Hundred Ninety-three,
Spencer wrote:
"It never occurred to Tyndall to ask what it was politic to say, but
simply to ask what was true. The like has of late years been shown in
his utterances concerning political matters--shown, it may be, with too
great frankness. This extreme frankness was displayed also in private,
and sometimes, perhaps, too much displayed; but every one must have the
defects of his qualities. Where absolute sincerity exists, it is certain
now and then to cause an expression of a feeling or opinion not
adequately restrained.
"But the contrast in genuineness between him and the average citizen was
very conspicuous. In a community of Tyndalls (to make a rather wild
supposition), there would be none of that flabbiness characterizing
current thought and action--no throwing overboard of principles
elaborated by painful experience in the past, and adoption of a
hand-to-mouth policy unguided by any principle. He was not the kind of
man who would have voted for a bill or a clause which he secretly
believed would be injurious, out of what is euphemistically called
'party loyalty,' or would have endeavored to bribe each section of the
electorate by 'ad captandum' measures, or would have hesitated to
protect life and property for fear of losing votes. What he saw right to
do he would have done, regardless of proximate consequences.
"The ordinary tests of generosity are very defective. As rightly
measured, generosity is great in proportion to the amount of self-denial
entailed; and where ample means are possessed, large gifts often entail
no self-denial. Far more self-denial may be involved in the performance,
on another's behalf, of some act that requires time and labor. In
addition to generosity under its ordinary form, which Professor Tyndall
displayed in unusual degree, he displayed it under a less common form.
"He was ready to take much trouble to help friends. I have had personal
experience of this. Though he had always in hand some investigation of
great interest to him, and though, as I have heard him say, when he bent
his mind to the subject he could not with any facility break off and
resume it again, yet, when I have sought scientific aid, information or
critical opinion, I never found the slightest reluctance to give me his
undivided attention. Much more markedly, however, was this kind of
generosity shown in another direction. Many men, while they are eager
for appreciation, manifest little or no appreciation of others, and
still less go out of their way to express it.
"With Tyndall it was not thus; he was eager to recognize achievement.
Notably in the case of Michael Faraday, and less notably, though still
conspicuously in many cases, he has bestowed much labor and sacrificed
many weeks in setting forth the merits of others. It was evidently a
pleasure to him to dilate on the claims of fellow workers.
"But there was a derivative form of this generosity calling for still
greater eulogy. He was not content with expressing appreciation of those
whose merits were recognized, but he used energy unsparingly in drawing
the attention of the public to those whose merits were unrecognized;
time after time in championing the cause of such, he was regardless of
the antagonism he aroused and the evil he brought upon himself. This
chivalrous defense of the neglected and ill-used has been, I think by
few, if any, so often repeated. I have myself more than once benefited
by his determination, quite spontaneously shown, that justice should be
done in the apportionment of credit; and I have with admiration watched
like actions of his in other cases: cases in which no consideration of
nationality or of creed interfered in the least with his insistence on
equitable distribution of honors.
"In this undertaking to fight for those who were unfairly dealt with, he
displayed in another direction that very conspicuous trait which, as
displayed in his Alpine feats, has made him to many persons chiefly
known: I mean courage, passing very often into daring. And here let me,
in closing this little sketch, indicate certain mischiefs which this
trait brought upon him. Courage grows by success. The demonstrated
ability to deal with dangers produces readiness to meet more dangers,
and is self-justifying where the muscular power and the nerve habitually
prove adequate. But the resulting habit of mind is apt to influence
conduct in other spheres, where muscular power and nerve are of no
avail--is apt to cause the daring of dangers which are not to be met by
strength of limb or by skill. Nature as externally presented by
precipice ice-slopes and crevasses may be dared by one who is adequately
endowed; but Nature, as internally represented in the form of physical
constitution, may not be thus dared with impunity. Prompted by high
motives, John Tyndall tended too much to disregard the protests of his
body.
"Over-application in Germany caused absolute sleeplessness, at one time,
I think he told me, for more than a week; and this, with kindred
transgressions, brought on that insomnia by which his after-life was
troubled, and by which his power for work was diminished; for, as I have
heard him say, a sound night's sleep was followed by a marked exaltation
of faculty.
"And then, in later life, came the daring which, by its results, brought
his active career to a close. He conscientiously desired to fulfil an
engagement to lecture at the British Institution, and was not deterred
by fear of consequences.
"He gave the lecture, notwithstanding the protest which for days before
his system had been making. The result was a serious illness,
threatening, as he thought at one time, a fatal result; and
notwithstanding a year's furlough for the recovery of health, he was
eventually obliged to resign his position. But for this defiance of
Nature, there might have been many more years of scientific exploration,
pleasurable to himself and beneficial to others; and he might have
escaped that invalid life which for a long time he had to bear.
In his case, however, the penalties of invalid life had great
mitigations--mitigations such as fall to the lot of few.
"It is conceivable that the physical discomforts and mental weariness
which ill-health brings may be almost, if not quite, compensated by the
pleasurable emotions caused by unflagging attentions and sympathetic
companionship. If this ever happens, it happened in his case. All who
have known the household during these years of nursing are aware of the
unmeasured kindness he has received without ceasing. I happen to have
had special evidence of this devotion on the one side and gratitude on
the other, which I do not think I am called upon to keep to myself, but
rather to do the contrary. In a letter I received from him some
half-dozen years ago, referring, among other things, to Mrs. Tyndall's
self-sacrificing care of him, occurred this sentence: 'She has raised my
ideal of the possibilities of human nature.'"
[Illustration: ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE]