Impressions of great naturalists

I had the privilege of knowing James Bryce for many years and enjoyed many long and delightful conversations with him. Beyond all other great men I have known he impressed me as most eager for broad and deep knowledge both of men and of nature. He gained more by travel and direct observation than by reading the works of others.

Although an address was carefully thought out, the following was entirely extemporaneous, because I was suddenly called upon to deliver it in the pulpit of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine—quite a contrast to the customary platform of the college and university lecturer! I felt compelled by the surrounding religious atmosphere to use a text, which was happily afforded by the choir as it sang Newman’s beautiful hymn as a processional.

I am not permitted to have a text, because I am not a preacher. As a naturalist, I am speaking here by invitation of the Bishop and the Dean of this Cathedral on the life of James Bryce as a student of man and of nature. I find in the opening of the beautiful hymn sung by the choir on entering this Cathedral the words which I cannot resist paraphrasing as the central thought of what I am about to say: Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling confusion.

“Lead, Kindly Light,” was the inner motive of the life of James Bryce—the kindly light of the genial nature of a man of faith and confidence, of a man of rugged resolution and constant determination, who never faltered in his efforts, whether it was a physical, or social, or intellectual, or political problem, to throw upon it the light of most careful and thorough examination.

Then another line of the same beautiful poem of John Henry Newman,

reveals the other aspect of the life of James Bryce which will impress you if you will read his four volumes as a traveler and explorer. When confused by the world and by the strife of political parties, Bryce would go off quietly on one of these great journeys of his, borne by his stout Scotch heart and by his indomitable energy as a mountain-climber. Brought up in a climate which brings out the best qualities in a man—that hardy nursery of strong Britons; born in northern Ireland, where the kindly qualities and genial nature of the Irish blend with the sturdy persistence of the Scotch, he was equipped by birth as well as by the early training of a remarkable father to enter life along many paths which opened out before him.

Follow him, no doubt somewhat confused, at the age of thirty-nine, after a period of political service in Parliament and lectureship in Oxford University, on that remarkable journey through and beyond the countries which he studied in his “Holy Roman Empire,” into and through Asia Minor, into the region on the borderland of Armenia, in search of Mount Ararat, and you observe an event in his life most typical and characteristic. Every one told him it was impossible to ascend Mount Ararat. One after another the parties that started with him fell behind, until, finally, about four or five thousand feet from the summit, he was entirely alone, and from that point he pushed on to the hollow between the twin peaks where the Bible myth tells us the Ark of Noah rested. He did not find any traces of the Ark, but he seems to have found, in that ascent and in the wonderful survey which the ascent gave him of the great tides of human history which have ebbed and flowed around the base of that mountain, a new and fresh perspective for all his future historical works. There, also, at the turning-point in life, when according to some men the critical age of forty is reached, James Bryce reversed the natural order of things, and until the age of eighty-three—during the latter part of which period I had the honor of making his acquaintance—became a younger man, a larger man, a greater man every year to all those who had the pleasure and privilege and inspiration of knowing him.

What a contrast his thoroughness with the superficiality of other men who have treated the same broad periods of human history, of human activity, and to whom many people appeal for light and guidance! Wells, writing his “Outline of History” from his armchair, guided by the work of all the authors upon whom he could lay his hand; Bryce, seeking out the fountains, the origins, the beginnings of these wonderful movements of peoples which are summed up in the words “Human History.” Himself retreading the paths worn by men for centuries, observing that wonderful variety of races of men where, in entering Transcaucasia, he came on the borders between Turkey and the Russian Dominions; again, when in South Africa, he touched the life of the Kaffirs, of the Hottentots, and of that race of Bushmen which stands at the very bottom of the human scale; finally, in South America, at the age of seventy-four, he entered the intimate life of a people he had not touched before, of the Spanish, the Portuguese, the native Indians of the South American Continent—always traveling with the same genial attitude, the same kindliness, the same lack of criticism, which distinguished his life and writings throughout.

Small wonder that, having as a boy and young man been brought up among the British people, among the Scotch, the Irish, the English, the Scotch-Irish, who are the fountains of our own American life, when he came to America he understood the Americans and was welcomed as one of us, as a man who could interpret our life, our institutions, who could tell us the truth about ourselves without our being offended, the most difficult message that any one coming from any other part of the world can give to the American!

Now we find that Bryce is not dead! James Bryce is not dead! James Bryce is living! He will live! Out of his inspiration, from those penetrating eyes, from that wonderful intellect, from those profound and unbiassed and unprejudiced studies, out of the fruits of years of personal experience, he finally surveys our American institutions in the last, and one of the greatest, of his works, “Modern Democracies.” Nothing could attest the truthfulness of his nature more clearly than the fact that the note of that volume is so different from the note of his early, confident writings as a young ardent Liberal, almost Radical. He found in our midst, and in the new democracies everywhere, so many confusing thoughts, so many unexpected counter-currents, that he comes out, as does every great and profound student of human life and human affairs who approaches the matter from the scientific standpoint of profound knowledge, with a clear warning of the dangers which surround us if we do not take heed and if we lose the art of choosing our leaders, our spiritual leaders, our intellectual leaders, our political leaders.

Leadership! Leadership is the last note, to my mind, of Bryce’s life. He is leading. He himself will lead because he has become now, and I believe for all time, the Kindly Light which will guide us through the interpretation of our American institutions.