In England, Osler added to his cultural fame. He was made president of the Bibliographical Society, of the Ashmolean Society and, to cap them all, of the Classical Association, an honour which probably pleased him as much or more than any that had ever come to him. His address of acceptance, which embodied the whole spirit of his ideal, cost him the greatest labour of his life.
He found great joy in England, but he found also his greatest sorrow, for his son, a singular combination of his mother’s suaviter and his father’s fortiter was killed in the war. It did not kill Osler, it only killed his desire to live. Like his master, Sir Thomas Browne, he knew that oblivion is not to be hired and that the night of time suppresseth the day. He had lived every moment of his day, and every hour had been joyous save one, and he had never stopped to compute his felicities. He died as he had lived, like a marathon runner taking the hurdle.
Dr. Cushing’s biography is documented and detailed. It is the kind of biography of Osler that should exist, but there should be another made from it: the story of his life and the charm of his personality in narrative form followed by interpretation, characterisation and estimation. The present one will be received gratefully by his former pupils and colleagues, by his connections and associates, and by libraries; but the general reader, the one who wants to find out without reading hundreds of letters and without wading through 1,500 pages, what Osler was like, how he acquired primacy of the medical world, how he made himself a savant in literature while climbing to the top of his own profession, will seek a book where these are told informatively and entertainingly.
Such a biography of William Osler is bound to come in time. I venture to say that, when it does come, it will dwell at far greater length on the first half of his life. Those who knew Osler intimately will be astonished to find scant reference in Dr. Cushing’s book to the interesting Francis family, with whom he lived for so many years in Montreal, or to Nancy Astor, to whom he was legal guardian. There is almost no allusion to the playful side of his nature. To make a man into a saint, though he deserves it, does not always do him justice. William Osler had extraordinarily great qualities, but he was passionate in his likes and dislikes; he was often indiscreet, sometimes tactless to an unbelievable degree; he could not and would not suffer fools; and he exacted unqualified devotion, while preserving the freedom to go his own way. He loved practical jokes, but he was not at all happy when they were played on him. For all this, his feet were less of clay than those of most men. One of the great charms of Osler was that he was so human, and had so much love and understanding of humanity. It is as a man that his friends remember him, and it is as man and teacher that he shall be known to posterity.
Thirty-five years ago a Yankee wagonmaker, who had gone to California as a “forty-niner” and piled up a fortune, thought to immortalise his name by founding a university in Worcester, Massachusetts. This University should be a beacon light to other educational institutions, the object of their emulation and envy. Realising that he was lacking concrete pedagogical ideas, that he was devoid of, even antipathic to the principles of organisation and co-operation, and, at least, suspicious of his prejudices, Jonas Gilman Clark was persuaded by his counsellor and friend, the late Senator Hoar, to ask a young professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins University, a froward, self-confident, energetic man of promise, to plan and steer his venture. In the book which he called Life and Confessions of a Psychologist G. Stanley Hall tells us how he did it, and how his forebears and parents, his education and environment, permitted him to do it.
The story is an interesting one, and besides revealing the personality of Dr. Hall, as it was meant to do, no doubt that he might better understand himself, it throws a light upon the road that education has travelled in this country the past third of a century, a light that is illuminating though not dazzling. Stanley Hall often filled the lamp that generated it, and he swung the reflector with great skill. It is possible that the coming generation will say that he was the soundest psychologist of his time and that he broke more virgin soil than William James. He was an important and tireless worker in the field of pedagogy and he was extremely articulate. When he had passed his seventieth birthday he believed he would yet do “a few things which shall be better than I have ever yet been able to do.” He was one of those countless old men who go about repeating “I feel just as I did when I was forty.” It was not vouchsafed him to do any of them. Dr. Hall prided himself on being a straight, hard hitter. It pleased him enormously to be called “l’enfant terrible” of psychology. He had not always been able to speak out what had been in his mind, so he determined to do it in his book. There will be much diversity of opinion as to whether his reputation shall profit by his frankness.
Solomon was unquestionably right about many things, but Dr. Hall does not agree with him that humility should go before honour. “In the view I have attained of man, his place in nature, his origin and destiny, I believe I have become a riper product of the present stage of civilisation than most of my contemporaries; have outgrown more superstitions, attained clearer insights, and have a deeper sense of peace within myself. I love but perhaps still more pity, mankind, groping and stumbling, often slipping backward along the upward path, which I believe I see just as clearly as Jesus, or Buddha did.”
Though not for a moment would I appear to be either a champion of the use of the word “some” as an adjective, or an habitual user of it, I maintain that this is some statement. And why leave out Mohammed? Most of us, subject to hours and days of self-depreciation, inadequacy, unworthiness, will envy the self-satisfaction and self-complacency of this retired pedagogue. But in reality it does not suffice him: “As I advance in years there are few things I crave more, and feel more keenly the lack of, than companionship.” Even review of successes and contemplation of accomplishments do not shut out loneliness. There is no record that Jesus or Buddha was lonely.
From his earliest days Dr. Hall had what the Freudians call an inferiority complex. His childish self-consciousness, his juvenile aloofness, his mature bumptiousness, his senescent strenuousness all testify it. He became aware of it early in life and strove hard to overcome it. But like the fetters of Hephæstus it could neither be snapped nor loosened. Like them, its substance was as subtle as spider’s web and so cunningly contrived that none might see it even of the blessed gods. The statement quoted above may be construed as a last effort to extricate himself from the crafty net.