Stensen's work brought him in contact with some of the distinguished men of the seventeenth century, all of whom learned to appreciate his breadth of intelligence and acuity of judgment. We have already mentioned his epistolary relation with Spinoza, and have said something about the controversy with Leibnitz, into which, in spite of his disinclination to controversy generally, he was drawn by the circumstances of the time and the solicitation of friends. Another great thinker of the century with whom he was brought into intimate relationship was Des Cartes, the distinguished philosopher. In fact, Des Cartes's system of thought influenced Stensen not a little, and he felt, when describing the function of muscles in the human body, and especially when he demonstrated that the heart was a muscle, that the mechanical notions he was thus introducing into anatomy were likely to prove confirmatory of Des Cartes's philosophic speculations. Almost more than any other, Stensen was the father of many ideas that have since become common, with regard to the physics of the human body and its qualities as a machine.
With his breadth of view, from familiarity {162} with the progress of science generally in his time, Steno's discussions of the reason for the lack of exact knowledge and for the prevalence of error, in spite of enthusiastic investigation, are worth while appreciating. He considered that the reason why so many portions of natural science are still in doubt is that in the investigation of natural objects no careful distinction is made between what is known to a certainty and what is known only with a certain amount of assurance. He discusses the question of deductive and inductive science, and considers that even those who depend on experience will not infrequently be found in error, because their conclusions are wider than their premises, and because it only too often happens that they admit principles as true for which they have no sure evidence. Stensen considered it important, therefore, not to hurry on in the explanation of things, but, so far as possible, to cling to old-time principles that had been universally accepted, since nearly always these would be found to contain fruitful germs of truth.
He was universally acknowledged as one of the greatest original thinkers of his time, and his conversion to the Church did much to dissipate religious prejudices among those of German nationality. His influence over distinguished visitors who came to Florence, and who were very glad to have the opportunity of making his acquaintance, was such that not a few Northern visitors became, like himself, converts to the Church.
It was in the midst of this that the request of the Duke of Hanover came that he should consent to become the bishop of his capital city. It was only after Stensen had been put under holy obedience that he would consent to accept the proffered dignity. His first thought was to distribute all his goods among the poor, and betake himself even without shoes on his feet, on a pedestrian journey to Rome. First, however, he made a pilgrimage to Loretto, where he arrived so overcome by the fatigue of the journey that the clergyman who took care of him while there, insisted on his accepting a pair of shoes from him, though he could not prevail upon him to travel in any other way than on foot.
His first action, after his consecration as bishop, was to write a letter, sending his episcopal benediction to Sister Maria Flavia, to whom he felt he owed the great privilege of his life. His lasting sense of satisfaction and consolation in his change of religion may be appreciated from what is, perhaps, the most interesting personal document that we have from Stensen's own hand, in which, on the eighteenth anniversary of his conversion, he writes to a friend to describe his feelings. "To-morrow," he says, "I shall finish, God willing, the eighteenth year of my happy life as a member of the Church. I wish to acknowledge once more my thankfulness for the part which you took under God in my conversion. As I hope to have the grace to be grateful to Him forever, so I sigh for the opportunity to express {164} my thankfulnes to you and your family. I can feel that my own ingratitude toward God, my slowness in His service, make me unworthy of His graces; but I hope that you who have helped me to enter his service will not cease to pray, so that I may obtain pardon for the past and grace for the future, in order in some measure to repay all the favors that have been conferred on me."
The distinguishing characteristic of his life as a bishop was his insistence on poverty as the principal element of his existence. He refused to enter his diocese in state in the carriage which the Duke offered to provide for him, but proceeded there on foot. No question of supposed dignity could make him employ a number of servants, and his only retainers were converts made by himself, who helped in the household and whom he treated quite as equals. He became engaged in one controversy on religious matters, but said that he did not consider that converts had ever been made by controversies. He compared it, indeed, to the gladiatorial contests in which the contestants had their heads completely enveloped in armor, so as to prevent any possible penetration of the weapons of an opponent. He insisted especially that in religious controversies the contending parties do not realize the significance given to words by each other, and that therefore no good can result.
After a time, Stensen did not find his work in Hamburg very satisfactory, because it was typically a missionary country, and the Jesuit {165} missionaries who had been introduced were accomplishing all that could be hoped for. Accordingly, when the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin became a convert to the Catholic Church, and asked that Stensen should be sent as a bishop into his dukedom, the request was complied with. Here, in the hardest kind of labor as a missionary, and in the midst of poverty that was truly apostolic, Stensen worked out the remaining years of his life. At his death he was looked upon as almost a saint. Notwithstanding his close relationship with two reigning princes, he did not leave enough personal effects to defray the expenses of his funeral. Besides his bishop's ring, and the very simple episcopal cross he wore, he had nothing of any value except some relics of St. Francis Xavier, St. Ignatius Loyola, and St. Philip Neri, which he had prized above all other treasures.
His missionary labors had not been marked by any very striking success in the number of converts made. In this his life would seem to have been a bitter personal disappointment. He never looked upon it as such, however, but continued to be eminently cheerful and friendly until the end. As a matter of fact, the influence of his career was to be felt much more two centuries after his death than during his lifetime. At the present moment, his life is well known in northern Germany, thanks to the biographic sketch written by Father Plenkers for the Stimmen aus Maria Laach, which has been very widely {166} circulated since its appearance in 1884. Something of the reaction among scientific minds in Germany toward a healthier orthodoxy of feeling, with regard to great religious questions, is undoubtedly due to the spread of the knowledge of the career of the great anatomist and geologist who gave up his scientific work for the sake of the spread of the higher truth.
After his death the Medici family asked for and obtained the privilege of having his body buried in San Lorenzo at Florence, with the members of the princely Medici house. More and more do visitors realize that the tablet over his remains chronicles the death of a man who was undoubtedly one of the world's great scientists, and one of the most original thinkers of his time, and that time a period greatly fertile in the history of science.
They continue this day as they were created, perfect in number and measure and weight, and from the ineffaceable characters impressed on them we may learn that those aspirations after accuracy in measurement, truth in statement, and justice in action, which we reckon among our noblest attributes as men, are ours because they are essential constituents of the image of Him who in the beginning created not only heaven and earth, but the materials of which heaven and earth consist.--CLERK MAXWELL On the Molecule, "Nature," Vol. VIII. 1873.
RÉNÉ JUST HAÜY
[Footnote 13: "Haüy" is pronounced a-ue (Century Dictionary), Nearly Represented By ah-we.]
Modern learning is gradually losing something of the self-complacency that characterized it in so constantly harboring the thought that the most important discoveries in physical science came in the nineteenth century. A more general attention to critical history has led to the realization that many of the primal discoveries whose importance made the development of modern science possible, came in earlier centuries, though their full significance was not then fully appreciated. The foundations of most of our modern sciences were, indeed, laid in the eighteenth century, but some of them came much earlier. It is genius alone that is able to break away from established traditions of knowledge, and, stepping across the boundary into the unknown, blaze a path along which it will be easy for subsequent workers to follow. Only in recent years has the due meed of appreciation for these great pioneers become part of the precious traditions of scientific knowledge.
We have seen that clergymen were great original investigators in science in the older times and we shall find, though it may be a source of {170} astonishment to most people that even our modern science has had some supreme original workers, during the last two centuries, in the ranks of the Catholic clergy.
The eighteenth century was not behind the seventeenth in original contributions made to science by clergymen. About the middle of the century, a Premonstratensian monk, Procopius Dirwisch by name, of the little town of Prenditz in Bohemia, demonstrated the identity of electrical phenomena with lightning, thus anticipating the work of our own Franklin. Dirwisch dared to set up a lightning-conductor, by which during thunderstorms he obtained sparks from clouds, and also learned to appreciate the danger involved in this experiment. When, in 1751, he printed his article on this subject, he pointed out this danger. His warning, however, was not always heeded, and at least one subsequent experimenter was struck dead by a charge of electricity.
Just at the junction of the last two centuries, Father Piazzi enriched the realm of science by one of the most important of modern discoveries in astronomy. On the night of 31 December, 1800--1 January, 1801, he discovered the little planet Ceres. This was the first of the asteroids, so many more of which were to be revealed to astronomical study during the next half-century. Father Piazzi's discovery was made, not by accident, but as the result of detailed astronomical work of the most painstaking character. He {171} had set out to make a map of the heavens, and to determine and locate the absolute position of all the visible stars. He had succeeded in cataloguing over 7,000 stars when his attention was called to one, hitherto supposed to be fixed, which he found had moved, during the interval between two observations, from its original position. He made still other observations, and thus determined the fact that it was a planetoid and not a fixed star with which he had to deal. Needless to say, his discovery proved a strong incentive to patient astronomical study of the same kind; and it is to these, rather than to great single discoveries, that we owe whatever progress in astronomy was made during the nineteenth century.
Contemporary with both of these last-mentioned men, and worthy to share in the scientific honors that were theirs, was the Abbé Haüy, who toward the end of the second half of the eighteenth century founded the science of crystallography; made a series of observations the value of which can never be disputed, originated theories some of which have served down to our own time as the basis of crystal knowledge, and attracted the attention of many students to the new science because of his charming personal character and his winning teaching methods. His life is a typical example of the value of work done in patient obscurity, founded on observation, and not on brilliant theories; and what he accomplished stamps him as one of the great {172} scientific geniuses of all time--one of the men who widened the bounds of knowledge in directions hitherto considered inaccessible to the ordinary methods of human investigation.
It is a commonplace of the lecturer on popular science at the present day, that the impulse to the development of our modern scientific discoveries which became so marked toward the end of the eighteenth century, was due in a noteworthy degree to the work of the French Encyclopedists. Their bringing together of all the details of knowledge in a form in which it could be readily consulted, and in which previous progress and the special lines of advance could be realized, might be expected to prove a fruitful source of suggestive investigation. As a matter of fact, however, a detailed knowledge of the past in science often seems to be rather a hindrance than a help to original genius, always prone to take its own way if not too much disturbed by the conventional knowledge already gained. Most of the great discoverers in science were comparatively young men when they began their careers as original investigators; and it was apparently their freedom from the incubus of too copious information that left their minds untrammelled to follow their own bent in seeking for causes where others had failed to find any hints of possible developments.
This was certainly the case with regard to many of those distinguished founders who lived in centuries prior to the nineteenth. Most of {173} them were men under thirty years of age, and not one of them had been noted, before he began his own researches, for the extent of his knowledge in the particular department of science in which his work was to prove so fruitful. Their lives illustrate the essential difference there is between theory and observation in science. The theorizer reaches conclusions that are popular as a rule in his own generation, and receives the honor due to a progressive scientist; the observer usually has his announcements of what he has actually seen scouted by those who are engaged in the same studies, and it is only succeeding generations who appreciate how much he really accomplished.
This was especially exemplified in the case of the Abbé Haüy, whose work in crystallography was to mean so much. What he learned was not from books, but from contact with the actual objects of his department of science; and it is because the example of a life like this can scarcely fail to serve a good purpose for the twentieth-century student, in impressing the lesson of the value of observation as opposed to theory, that its details are retold.
Réné Just Haüy was born 28 February, 1743, in the little village of Saint-Just, in the Department of Oise, somewhat north of the center of France. Like many another great genius, he was the son of very poor parents. His father was a struggling linen-weaver, who was able to support himself only with difficulty. At first {174} there seemed to be no other prospect for his eldest son than to succeed to his father's business. Certainly there seemed to be no possibility that he should be able to gain his livelihood by any other means than by the work of his hands.
Fortunately, however, there was in Haüy's native town a Premonstratensian monastery, and it was not long before some of the monks began to notice that the son of the weaver was of an especially pious disposition and attended church ceremonies very faithfully. The chance was given to him to attend the monastery school, and he succeeded admirably in his studies. As a consequence, the prior had his attention directed to the boy, and found in him the signs of a superior intelligence. He summoned the lad's parents and discussed with them the possibility of obtaining for their son an education. There were many difficulties in the way, but the principal one was their absolute financial inability to help him. If the son was to obtain an education, it must be somehow through his own efforts, and without any expense to his parents.
The prior thereupon obtained for young Haüy a position as a member of a church choir in Paris; and, later, some of those to whom he had recommended the boy secured for him a place in the college of Navarre. Here, during the course of a few years, he made such an impression upon the members of the faculty that they asked him to become one of the teaching corps of the institution. It was a very modest position that he {175} held, and his salary scarcely more than paid for his board and clothes and a few books. Haüy was well satisfied, however, because his position provided him with opportunities for pursuing the studies for which he cared most. At this time he was interested mainly in literature, and succeeded in learning several languages, which were to be of considerable use to him later on in his scientific career.
After some years spent in the college of Navarre he was ordained priest, and not long afterward became a member of the faculty of the college of Cardinal Lemoine. Here his position was somewhat better, and he was brought in contact with many of the prominent scholars of Paris. He seems, however, to have been quite contented in his rather narrow circle of interests, and was not specially anxious to advance himself. It is rather curious to realize that a man who was later to spend all his time in the pursuit of the physical sciences, knew practically nothing at all about them, and certainly had no special interest in any particular branch of science, until he reached the age of almost thirty years.
Even then his first introduction to serious science did not come because of any special interest that had been aroused in his own mind, but entirely because of his friendship for a distinguished old fellow-professor, whose walks he used to share, and who was deeply interested in botany. This was the Abbé Lhomond, a very {176} well-known scholar, to whom we owe a number of classic text-books arranged especially for young folk.
The Abbé's recreation consisted in botanizing expeditions; and Haüy, who had chosen the kindly old priest as his spiritual director, was his most frequent companion. Occasionally, when M. Lhomond was ailing, and unable to take his usual walks, Haüy spent the time with him. He rather regretted the fact that he did not know enough about botany to be able to make collections of certain plants to bring to the professor at such times, in order that the latter might not entirely miss his favorite recreation. Accordingly, one summer when he was on his vacation at his country home, he asked one of the Premonstratensian monks, who was very much interested in botany, to teach him the principles of the science, so as to enable him to recognize various plants. Of course his request was granted. He expected to have a pleasant surprise for Abbé Lhomond on his return, and to draw even closer in his friendly relations with him, because of their mutual interest in what the old Abbé called his scientia amabilis (lovely science). His little plan worked to perfection, and there was won for the study of physical science a new recruit, who was to do as much as probably any one of his generation to extend scientific knowledge in one department, though that department was rather distant from botany.
Haüy's interest in botany, however, was to {177} prove only temporary. It brought him in contact with other departments of natural history, and it was not long before he found that his favorite study was that of minerals, and especially of the various forms of crystals. So absorbed did he become in this subject that nothing pleased him better than the opportunity to spend long days in the investigation of the comparative size and shape of the crystals in the museum at Paris. A friend has said of him that, whether they were the most precious stones and gems or the most worthless specimens of ordinary minerals, it was always only their crystalline shape that interested Haüy. Diamonds he studied, but only in order to determine their angles; and apparently they had no more attraction for him than any other well-defined crystal--much less, indeed, than some of the more complex crystalline varieties, which attracted his interest because of the difficulty of the problems they presented.
Like many another advance in science, Haüy's first great original step in crystallography was the result of what would be called a lucky accident. These accidents, however, be it noted, happen only to geniuses who are capable of taking advantage of them. How many a man had seen an apple fall from a tree before this little circumstance gave Newton the hint from which grew, eventually, the laws of gravity! Many a man, doubtless, had seen little boys tapping on logs of wood, to hear how well sound was {178} carried through a solid body, without getting from this any hint, such as Laennec derived from it, for the invention of the stethoscope. So, too, many a person before Haüy's time had seen a crystal fall and break, leaving a smooth surface, without deriving any hint for the explanation of the origin of crystals.
According to the familiar story, Haüy was one day looking over a collection of very fine crystals in the house of Citizen Du Croisset, Treasurer of France. He was examining an especially fine specimen of calcspar, when it fell from his hands and was broken. Of course the visitor was much disturbed by this accident. His friend, however, in order to show him that he was not at all put out at the breaking of the crystal, insisted on Haüy's taking it with him for purposes of study, as they had both been very much interested in the perfectly smooth plane of the fracture. As Haüy himself says, this broken portion had a peculiarly brilliant lustre, "polished, as it were by nature," as beautifully as the outer portions of the crystal; thus demonstrating that in building up of so large a crystal there must have been certain steps of progress, at any of which, were the formation arrested, smooth surfaces would be found.
On taking the crystal home, Haüy proceeded further to break up the smaller fragment; and he soon found that he could remove slice after slice of it, until there was no trace of the original prism, but in place of it a rhomboid, {179} perfectly similar to Iceland spar, and lying in the middle of what was the original prism. This fact seemed to him very important. From it he began the development of a theory of crystallization, using this observation as the key. Before this time it had been hard for students of mineralogy to understand how it was that substances of the same composition might yet have what seemed to be different crystalline forms. Calcspar, for instance, might be found crystallized in forms, apparently, quite at variance with one another.
By his studies, however, Haüy was able to determine that whenever substances of the same composition crystallized, even though the external form of the crystals seemed to be different, all of them were found to have the same internal nucleus. Whenever the mineral under observation was chemically different from another, then the nucleus also had a distinctive character; and so there came the law that all substances of the same kind crystallized in the same way, notwithstanding apparent differences. Indeed, one of the first results of this law was the recognition of the fact that when the crystalline forms of two minerals were essentially different, then, no matter how similar they might be, there was sure to be some chemical difference. This enabled Haüy to make certain prophecies with regard to the composition of minerals.
A number of different kinds of crystals had been classed together under the name of {180} heavyspar. Some of these could not, by the splitting process, be made to produce nuclei of similar forms, and the angles of the crystals were quite different. Haüy insisted that, in spite of close resemblances, there was an essential distinction in the chemical composition of these two different crystalline formations; and before long careful investigation showed that, while many of the specimens called heavyspar contain barium, some of them contain a new substance--strontium--which had been very little studied heretofore. This principle did not prove to be absolute in its application; but the amount of truth in it attracted attention to the subject of crystallography because of the help which that science would afford in the easy recognition of the general chemical composition of mineral substances. The most important part of Haüy's work was the annunciation of the law of symmetry. He emphasized the fact that the forms of crystals are not irregular or capricious, but are very constant and definite, and founded on absolutely fixed and ascertainable laws. He even showed that, while from certain crystalline nuclei sundry secondary forms may be derived, there are other forms that cannot by any possibility occur. Any change of crystalline form noticed in his experiments led to a corresponding change along all similar parts of the crystal. The angles, the edges, the faces, were modified in the same way, at the same time. All these elements of mensuration within the crystal Haüy thought could be indicated by rational coefficients.
Crystallography, however, did not absorb all Haüy's attention. He further demonstrated his intellectual power by following out other important lines of investigation that had been suggested by his study of crystals. It is to him more than to any other, for instance, that is due the first steps in our knowledge of pyro-(or thermo-) electricity. Mr. George Chrystal, professor of mathematics at the University of St. Andrews, in the article on electricity written for the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia, says it was reserved for the Abbé Haüy in his Treatise on Mineralogy to throw a clear light on this curious branch of the science of electricity.
To those who are familiar with the history of the development of this science it will be no surprise to find a clergyman playing a prominent role in its development. During the days of the beginning of electricity many ecclesiastics seem to have been particularly interested in the curious ways of electrical phenomena, and as a consequence they are the original discoverers of some of the most important early advances. Not long before this, Professor Gordon, a Scotch Benedictine monk who was teaching at the University of Erfurt, constructed the first practical electrical machine. Kleist, who is one of the three men to whom is attributed the discovery of the principle of storing and concentrating electricity, and who invented the Leyden Jar, which was named after the town where it was first manufactured, was also a member of a Religious Order. As {182} we have already stated, Dirwisch, the Premonstratensian monk, set up a lightning-conductor by which he obtained sparks from the clouds even before our own Franklin.
Abbé Haüy was only following a very common precedent, then, when he succeeded by his original research in setting the science of pyro-electricity firmly on its feet. It is true, others before him had noted that substances like tourmaline possessed electrical properties. There is even some good reason for thinking that the lyncurium of the ancients which, according to certain of the Greek philosophers, especially Theophrastus, who seems to have made a close study of the subject, attracted light bodies, was really our modern tourmaline. In modern times the Dutch found this mineral in Ceylon and, because it attracted ashes and other light substances to itself, called it aschentriker--that is, attractor of ashes. Others had still further experimented with this curious substance and its interesting electrical phenomena. It remained for Abbé Haüy, however, to demonstrate the scientific properties of tourmaline and the relations which its electrical phenomena bore toward the crystalline structure of the mineral. He showed that the electricity of tourmaline decreases rapidly from the summits or poles toward the middle of the crystal. As a matter of fact, at the middle of the crystal its electrical power becomes imperceptible.
He showed also that each particle of a crystal {183} that exhibits pyro-electricity is itself a source of the same sort of electricity and exhibits polarity. His experimental observations served to prove also that the pyro-electric state has an important connexion with the want of symmetry in the crystals of the substances that exhibit this curious property. In tourmaline, for instance, he found the vitreous charge always at the summit of the crystal which had six faces, and the resinous electricity at the summit of the crystal with three faces.
His experiments soon showed him, too, that there were a number of other substances, besides tourmaline, which possessed this same electrical property when subjected to heat in the crystalline stage. Among these were the Siberian and Brazilian topaz, borate of magnesia, mesotype, sphene, and calamine. In all of these other pyro-electrical crystals, Haüy detected a corresponding deviation from the rules of symmetry in their secondary crystals to that which occurs in tourmaline. In a word, after he had concluded his experiments and observations there was very little left for others to add to this branch of science, although such distinguished men as Sir David Brewster in England were among his successors in the study of the peculiar phenomena of pyro-electricity.
It may naturally enough be thought that, born in the country, of poor parents, and compelled to work for his living, Haüy would at least have the advantage of rugged health to help him in his {184} career. He had been a delicate child, however; and his physical condition never improved to such an extent as to inure him to hardships of any kind. One of his biographers has gone so far as to say that his life was one long malady. The only distraction from his almost constant suffering was his studies. Yet this man lived to be nearly eighty years of age, and accomplished an amount of work that might well be envied even by the hardiest.
In the midst of his magnificent success as a scientist, Haüy was faithful to all his obligations as a priest. His name was known throughout Europe, and many of the scientific societies had considered that they were honoring themselves by conferring titles, or degrees, upon him; but he continued to be the humble, simple student that he had always been.
At the beginning of the Revolution, Abbé Haüy was among the priests who refused the oath which the Republican government insisted on their taking, and which so many of them considered derogatory to their duty as churchmen. Those who refused were thrown into prison, Haüy among them. He did not seem to mind his incarceration much, but he was not a little perturbed by the fact that the officers who made the arrest insisted on taking his precious papers, and that his crystals were all tossed aside and many of them broken. For some time he was kept in confinement with a number of other members of the faculty of the University, mainly {185} clergymen, in the Seminary of St. Firmin, which had been turned into a temporary jail.
Haüy did not allow his studies to be entirely interrupted by his imprisonment. He succeeded in obtaining permission to have his cabinets of crystals brought to his cell, and he continued his investigation of them. It was not long before powerful friends, and especially his scientific colleague, Gregory St. Hilaire, interested themselves in his case, and succeeded in obtaining his liberation. When the order for his release came, however, Haüy was engaged on a very interesting problem in crystallography, and he refused to interrupt his work and leave the prison. It was only after considerable persuasion that he consented to go the next morning. It may be added that only two weeks later many from this same prison were sent to the guillotine.
It is rather remarkable that the Revolutionary government, after his release, did not disturb him in any way. He was so much occupied with his scientific pursuits that he seems to have been considered absolutely incapable of antagonizing the government; and, as he had no enemies, he was not denounced to the Convention. This was fortunate, because it enabled him to pursue his studies in peace. There was many another member of the faculty of the University who had not the same good fortune. Lavoisier was thrown into prison, and, in spite of all the influence that could be brought to bear, the great discoverer of oxygen met his death by the guillotine. At least {186} two others of the professors in the physical department, Borda and De Lambre, were dismissed from their posts. Haüy, though himself a priest who had refused to take the oath, and though he continued to exercise his religious functions, did not hesitate to formulate petitions for his imprisoned scientific friends; yet, because of his well-known gentleness of character, this did not result in arousing the enmity of any members of the government, or attracting such odious attention as might have made his religious and scientific work extremely difficult or even prevented it entirely.
Notwithstanding the stormy times of the French Revolution and the stirring events going on all round him in Paris, Haüy continued to study his crystals in order to complete his observations; and then he embodied his investigations and his theories in his famous "Treatise on Crystallography." This attracted attention not only on account of the evident novelty of the subject, but more especially because of the very thorough method with which Haüy had accomplished his work. His style, says the historian of crystallography, was "perspicuous and elegant. The volume itself was noteworthy for its clear arrangement and full illustration by figures." In spite of its deficiencies, then deficiencies which must exist in any ground-breaking work--this monograph has had an enduring influence. Some of the most serious flaws in his theory were soon brought to light because of the very stimulus afforded by his investigations.
As to the real value of his treatise, perhaps no better estimate can be formed than that given by Cuvier in his collection of historical eulogies (Vol. III, p. 155): "In possession of a large collection, to which there flowed from all sides the most varied minerals, arranged with the assistance of young, enthusiastic, and progressive students, it was not long before there was given back to Haüy the time which he had apparently wasted over other things. In a few years he raised up a wondrous monument, which brought as much glory to France as it did somewhat later to himself. After centuries of neglect, his country at one bound found itself in the first rank in this department of natural science. In Haüy's book are united in the highest degree two qualities which are seldom associated. One of these is that it was founded on an original discovery which had sprung entirely from the genius of its author; and the other is that this discovery is pursued and developed with almost unheard-of persistence down even to the least important mineral variety. Everything in the work is great, both as regards conception and detail. It is as complete as the theory it announces."
It was not surprising, then, that, after the death of Professor Dolomieu, Haüy should be raised to the chair of mineralogy and made director of that department in the Paris Museum of Natural History. Here he was to have new triumphs. We have already said that his book was noted for the elegance of its style and its perspicuity. {188} As the result of this absolute clearness of ideas, and completeness and simplicity of expression, Haüy attracted to him a large number of pupils. Moreover, all those interested in the science, when they came in contact with him, were so charmed by his grace and simplicity of manner that they were very glad to attend his lectures and to be considered as his personal friends. Among his listeners were often such men as La Place, Berthollet, Fourcroy, Lagrange and Lavoisier.
It was not long before honors of all kinds, degrees from universities and memberships in scientific societies all over Europe, began to be heaped upon Haüy. They did not, however, cause any change in the manners or mode of life of the simple professor of old times. Every day he continued to take his little walks through the city, and was very glad to have opportunity to be of assistance to others. He showed strangers the way to points of interest for which they inquired, whenever it was necessary, obtained entrance cards for them to the collection; and not a few of those who were thus enabled to take advantage of his kindness failed to realize who the distinguished man was to whom they owed their opportunities. His old-fashioned clothing still continued to be quite good enough for him, and his modest demeanor and simple speech did not betray in any way the distinguished scientist he had become.
Some idea of the consideration in which the {189} Abbé Haüy was held by his contemporaries may be gathered from the fact that several of the reigning monarchs of Europe, as well as the heirs apparent to many thrones, came at some time or other to visit him, to see his collection, and to hear the kindly old man talk on his hobby. There was only one other scientist in the nineteenth century--and that was Pasteur, toward the end of it--who attracted as much attention from royalty. Among Haüy's visitors were the King of Prussia, the Emperor of Austria, the Archduke John, as well as the Emperor of Russia and his two brothers, Nicholas and Michael, the first of whom succeeded his elder brother, Alexander, to the throne, and half a century later was ruling Russia during the Crimean War. The Prince Royal of Denmark spent a portion of each year for several years with Haüy, being one of his intimates, who was admitted to his room while he was confined to his bed, and who was permitted to share his personal investigations and scientific studies.
His most striking characteristic was his suavity toward all. The humblest of his students was as sure to receive a kindly reception from him, and to have his difficulties solved with as much patience as the most distinguished professor in this department. It was said that he had students of all classes. The attendants at the normal school were invited to visit him at his house, and he permitted them to learn all his secrets. When they came to him for a whole {190} day, he insisted on taking part in their games, and allowed them to go home only after they had taken supper with him. All of them looked upon him as a personal friend, and some of them were more confidential with him than with their nearest relatives. Many a young man in Paris during the troublous times of the Revolutionary period found in the good Abbé Haüy not only a kind friend, but a wise director and another father.
It is said that one day, when taking his usual walk, he came upon two former soldiers who were just preparing to fight a duel and were on their way to the dueling ground. He succeeded in getting them to tell him the cause of their quarrel, and after a time tempted them to come with him into what I fear we should call at the present day a saloon. Here, over a glass of wine, he finally persuaded them to make peace and seal it effectually. It is hard to reconcile this absolute simplicity of character and kindness of heart with what is sometimes assumed to be the typical, distant, abstracted, self-centered ways of the great scientist.
Few men have had so many proofs of the lofty appreciation of great contemporaries. Many incidents serve to show how much Napoleon thought of the distinguished scholar who had created a new department of science and attracted the attention of the world to his splendid work at Paris. Not long after he became emperor, Napoleon named him Honorary Canon of the {191} Cathedral of Notre Dame; and when he founded the Legion of Honor, he made the Abbé one of the original members. Shortly after these dignities had been conferred upon him, it happened that the Abbé fell ill; and Napoleon, having sent his own physician to him, went personally to call on him in his humble quarters, saying to the physician: "Remember that you must cure Abbé Haüy, and restore him to us as one of the glories of our reign." After Napoleon's return from Elba, he told the Abbé that the latter's "Treatise on Crystallography" was one of the books that he had specially selected to take with him to Elba, to while away the leisure that he thought he would have for many years. Abbé Haüy's independence of spirit, and his unselfish devotion to his native country, may be best appreciated from the tradition that after the return from Elba, when there was a popular vote for the confirmation of Napoleon's second usurpation, the old scientist voted, No.
In spite of his constant labor at his investigations, his uniformly regular life enabled him to maintain his health, and he lived to the ripe age of over seventy-nine. Toward the end of his career, he did not obtain the recognition that his labors deserved. After the Restoration, he was not in favor with the new authorities in France, and he accordingly lost his position as professor at the University. The absolute simplicity of life that he had always maintained now stood him in good stead; and, notwithstanding the {192} smallness of his income, he did not have to make any change in his ordinary routine. Unfortunately, an accidental fall in his room at the beginning of his eightieth year confined him to his bed; and then his health began to fail very seriously. He died on the 3 June, 1822.
He had shown during his illness the same gentleness and humility, and even enthusiasm for study whenever it was possible, that had always characterized him. While he was confined to his bed he divided his time between prayer, attention to the new edition of his works which was about to appear, and his interest for the future of those students who had helped him in his investigations. Cuvier says of him that "he was as faithful to his religious duties as he was in the pursuit of his studies. The profoundest speculations with regard to weighty matters of science had not kept him from the least important duty which ecclesiastical regulations might require of him." There is, perhaps, no life in all the history of science which shows so clearly how absolutely untrue is the declaration so often made, that there is essential opposition between the intellectual disposition of the inquiring scientist and those other mental qualities which are necessary to enable the Christian to bow humbly before the mysteries of religion, acknowledge all that is beyond understanding in what has been revealed, and observe faithfully all the duties that flow from such belief.
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, while this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity from so simple a beginning, endless forms, most beautiful and most wonderful, have been and are being evolved.-- Closing sentence of DARWIN'S Origin of Species.
GREGOR MENDEL
[Footnote 14: The portrait of Abbot Mendel which precedes this sketch was kindly furnished by the Vicar of the Augustinian Monastery of Brünn. It represents him holding a fuchsia, his favorite flower, and was taken in 1867, just as he was completing the researches which were a generation later to make his name so famous. The portrait has for this reason a very special interest as a human document. We may add that the sketch of Abbot Mendel which appears here was read by the Very Rev. Klemens Janetschek, the Vicar of the Monastery, who suggested one slight change in it, so that it may be said to have had the revision of one who knew him and his environment very well.]
Scientific progress does not run in cycles of centuries, and as a rule it bears no relationship to the conventional arrangement of years. As has been well said--for science a new century begins every second. There are interesting coincidences, however, of epoch-making discoveries in science corresponding with the beginning of definite eras in time that are at least impressive from a mnemonic standpoint, if from no other.
The very eve of the nineteenth century saw the first definite formulation of the theory of evolution. Lamarck, the distinguished French biologist, stated a theory of development in nature which, although it attracted very little attention {196} for many years after its publication, has come in our day to be recognized as the most suggestive advance in biology in modern times.
As we begin the twentieth century, the most interesting question in biology is undoubtedly that of heredity. Just at the dawn of the century three distinguished scientists, working in different countries, rediscovered a law with regard to heredity which promises to be even more important for the science of biology in the twentieth century than was Lamarck's work for the nineteenth century. This law, which, it is thought, will do more to simplify the problems of heredity than all the observations and theories of nineteenth-century workers, and which has already done much more to point out the methods by which observation, and the lines along which experimentation shall be best directed so as to replace elaborate but untrustworthy scientific theorizing by definite knowledge, was discovered by a member of a small religious community in the little-known town of Brünn, in Austria, some thirty-five years before the beginning of the present century.
Considering how generally, in English-speaking countries at least, it is supposed that the training of a clergyman and particularly that of a religious unfits him for any such initiative in science, Father Mendel's discovery comes with all the more emphatic surprise. There is no doubt, however, in the minds of many of the most prominent present-day workers in biology that his {197} discoveries are of a ground-breaking character that will furnish substantial foundation for a new development of scientific knowledge with regard to heredity.
Lest it should be thought that perhaps there is a tendency to make Father Mendel's discovery appear more important here than it really is, because of his station in life, it seems desirable to quote some recent authoritative expressions of opinion with regard to the value of his observations and the importance of the law he enunciated, as well as the principle which he considered to be the explanation of that law.
In the February number of Harper's Monthly for 1903, Professor Thomas Hunt Morgan, Professor of Biology at Bryn Mawr, and one of the best known of our American biologists, whose recent work on "Regeneration" has attracted favorable notice all over the world, calls attention to the revolutionary character of Mendel's discovery. He considers that recent demonstrations of the mathematical truth of Mendel's Law absolutely confirm Mendel's original observations, and the movement thus initiated, in Professor Morgan's eyes, gives the final coup de grace to the theory of natural selection. "If," he says, "we reject Darwin's theory of natural selection as an explanation of evolution, we have at least a new and promising outlook in another direction and are in a position to answer the oft-heard but unscientific query of those who must cling to some dogma: if you reject Darwin, what better have you to offer?"