Permit me to add, in conclusion, that in future I can take no notice of any letters to which the writers do not think fit to attach their names. There can be no need of initials in scientific discussion, except to shield incompetence or license discourtesy.
J. Ruskin.
[From “Rendu’s Theory of the Glaciers of Savoy,” Macmillan, 1874.]
JAMES DAVID FORBES: HIS REAL GREATNESS.[180]
The incidental passage in “Fors,” hastily written, on a contemptible issue, does not in the least indicate my sense of the real position of James Forbes among the men of his day. I have asked his son’s[181] permission to add a few words expressive of my deeper feelings.
For indeed it seems to me that all these questions as to priority of ideas or observations are beneath debate among noble persons. What a man like Forbes first noticed, or demonstrated, is of no real moment to his memory. What he was, and how he taught, is of consummate moment. The actuality of his personal power, the sincerity and wisdom of his constant teaching, need no applause from the love they justly gained, and can sustain no diminution from hostility; for their proper honor is in their usefulness. To a man of no essential power, the accident of a discovery is apotheosis; to him, the former knowledge of all the sages of earth is as though it were not; he calls the ants of his own generation round him, to observe how he flourishes in his tiny forceps the grain of sand he has imposed upon Pelion. But from all such vindication of the claims of Forbes to mere discovery, I, his friend, would, for my own part, proudly abstain. I do not in the slightest degree care whether he was the first to see this, or the first to say that, or how many common persons had seen or said as much before. What I rejoice in knowing of him is that he had clear eyes and open heart for all things and deeds appertaining to his life; that whatever he discerned, was discerned impartially; what he said, was said securely; and that in all functions of thought, experiment, or communication, he was sure to be eventually right, and serviceable to mankind, whether out of the treasury of eternal knowledge he brought forth things new or old.
This is the essential difference between the work of men of true genius and the agitation of temporary and popular power. The first root of their usefulness is in subjection of their vanity to their purpose. It is not in calibre or range of intellect that men vitally differ; every phase of mental character has honorable office; but the vital difference between the strong and the weak—or let me say rather, between the availing and valueless intelligence—is in the relation of the love of self to the love of the subject or occupation. Many an Alpine traveller, many a busy man of science, volubly represent to us their pleasure in the Alps; but I scarcely recognize one who would not willingly see them all ground down into gravel, on condition of his being the first to exhibit a pebble of it at the Royal Institution. Whereas it may be felt in any single page of Forbes’ writing, or De Saussure’s, that they love crag and glacier for their own sake’s sake; that they question their secrets in reverent and solemn thirst: not at all that they may communicate them at breakfast to the readers of the Daily News—and that, although there were no news, no institutions, no leading articles, no medals, no money, and no mob, in the world, these men would still labor, and be glad, though all their knowledge was to rest with them at last in the silence of the snows, or only to be taught to peasant children sitting in the shade of pines.
And whatever Forbes did or spoke during his noble life was in this manner patiently and permanently true. The passage of his lectures in which he shows the folly of Macaulay’s assertion that “The giants of one generation are the pigmies of the next,”[182] beautiful in itself, is more interesting yet in the indication it gives of the general grasp and melodious tone of Forbes’ reverent intellect, as opposed to the discordant insolence of modernism. His mind grew and took color like an Alpine flower, rooted on rock, and perennial in flower; while Macaulay’s swelled like a puff-ball in an unwholesome pasture, and projected itself far round in deleterious dust.
I had intended saying a few words more touching the difference in temper, and probity of heart, between Forbes and Agassiz, as manifested in the documents now[183] laid before the public. And as far as my own feelings are concerned, the death of Agassiz[184] would not have caused my withholding a word. For in all utterance of blame or praise, I have striven always to be kind to the living—just to the dead. But in deference to the wish of the son of Forbes, I keep silence: I willingly leave sentence to be pronounced by time, above their two graves.
John Ruskin.