Chapter III: Part 3

In the Sixth Century, Cosmos, one of the Saints, wrote a complete explanation of the phenomena of the heavens. To account for the movement of the sun, he said God had His angels push it across the firmament and put it behind a mountain each night, and the next morning it was brought out on the other side. He met every objection by citations from Job, Genesis, Ezekiel, Ecclesiastes and the New Testament, and wound up with an anathema upon any or all who doubted or questioned in this matter of astronomy.

The whole Christian idea of the Universe was simple, plain and plausible. The child-mind could easily accept it, and when backed up by the Holy Book, written at God's dictation, word for word, infallible and absolutely true in every part, one does not wonder that progress was practically blocked for fourteen hundred years, but the real miracle is that it was not blocked forever.

* * * * *

Thousands of years before Christ, the Chinese had mapped the heavens and knew the movements of the planets so well that they correctly prophesied the positions of the various constellations many years in advance. Twenty-five hundred years before our Christian era a Chinese Governor put to death the astronomers Hi and Ho because they had failed to foretell an eclipse, quite according to the excellent Celestial plan of killing the doctor when the patient dies.

Sir William Hamilton points out the fact that the Chinese, five thousand years ago, knew astronomy as well as we do, and that Christian astrology grew out of Chinese astronomy, in an effort to foretell the fortunes of men.

Fear wants to know the future, and astrology and priesthood are synonymous terms, since the business of the priest has always been to prophesy, a profession he has not yet discarded. Their prophecies are at present innocuous and lightly heeded. They preach that perfect faith will move a mountain, but energetic railroad-builders of today find it quicker and cheaper to tunnel.

* * * * *

A certain type of man accepts a certain theory.

The Christian view of creation was practically the conception of the Greeks before Thales. This wise man, in the Sixth Century before Christ, taught that the earth was round, and that certain stars were also worlds. He showed that the earth was round and proved it by the disappearance of the ship as it sailed away. He located the earth, moon and sun so perfectly that he prophesied an eclipse, and when it took place it so terrified the Medes and the Lydians, who were in battle with each other, that they threw down their arms and made peace. Thales had explained that Atlas carried the world on his shoulder, but he didn't explain what Atlas stood upon.

Pythagoras, one of the pupils of Thales, following the idea still further, showed that the moon derived its light from the sun; that the earth was a globe and turned daily on its axis.

He held that the sun was the center of the universe and that the planets revolved around it. Anaxagoras followed a few years later than Pythagoras, and became convinced that the sun was merely a ball of fire and therefore should not be worshiped; that it follows a natural law, that nothing ever happens by chance, and that to pray for rain is absurd.

For his honesty in expressing what he thought was truth, the priests of Athens had Anaxagoras and his family exiled to perpetual banishment from Athens and all of his books were burned.

Plato touched on Astronomy, for he touches on everything, and fully believed that the earth was round.

His pupil, Aristotle, taught all that Anaxagoras taught, and if he also had not been exiled, but had been free to study, investigate and express himself, he would have come very close to the truth.

Hipparchus, a hundred years after Aristotle, calculated the length of the year to within six minutes, discovered the precession of equinoxes and counted all the stars he could see, making a map of them.

Seventy years after Christ, Ptolemy, a Greco-Egyptian, but not of the royal line of Ptolemies, published his great book, "The Almagest." For over fourteen centuries it was the textbook for the best astronomers.

It taught that the earth was the center of the universe, and that the sun and the planets revolve around it. There were many absurdities, however, that had to be explained, and the priests practically rejected the whole book as "pagan" and taught an astronomy of their own, founded entirely upon the Bible. They wanted an explanation that would be accepted by the common people.

This astronomy was not designed to be very scientific, exact or truthful--all they asked was, "Is it plausible?" Expediency, to theology, has always been much more important than truth.

"Besides," said Saint Basil, "what boots it concerning all this conjecture about the stars, since the earth is soon to come to an end, as is shown by our Holy Scriptures, and man's business is to prepare his soul for eternity?"

This was the general attitude of the Church--exact truth was a matter of indifference. And if Science tended to unseat men's faith in the Bible, and in God's most holy religion, then so much the worse for Science.

It will thus plainly be seen why the Church felt compelled to fight Science--the very life of the Church was at stake.

The Church was the vital thing--not truth. If truth could be taught without unseating faith, why, all right, but anything that made men doubt must be rooted out at any cost. And that is why priests have opposed Science, not that they hate Science less, but that they love the Church more.

From the time of Ptolemy to that of Copernicus--fourteen hundred years--theology practically dictated the learning of the world. And to Copernicus must be given the credit of having really awakened the science of astronomy from her long and peaceful sleep.

* * * * *

The little land that we know as Poland has produced some of the finest and most acute intellects the world has ever known.

Tragic and blood-stained is her history, and this tragedy, perhaps, has been a prime factor in the evolution of her men of worth. Poland has been stamped upon and pushed apart; and a persecuted people produce a pride of race that has its outcrop in occasional genius.

Recently we heard of the great Paderewski playing before the Czar, and His Majesty, in a speech meant to be very complimentary, congratulated the company that so great a genius as he was a citizen of Russia.

"Your Majesty, I am not a Russian--I am a Pole!" was the proud reply.

The Czar replied, smiling, "There is no such country as Poland--now there is only Russia!"

And Paderewski replied, "Pardon my hasty remark--you speak but truth." And then he played Chopin's "Funeral March," a dirge not only to the great men of Poland gone, but to Poland herself.

Nicholas Copernicus was born at the quaint old town of Thorn, in Poland, February Nineteen, Fourteen Hundred Seventy-three. The family name was Koppernigk, but Nicholas latinized it when he became of age, and seemingly separated from his immediate kinsmen forever.

His father was a merchant, fairly prosperous, and only in the line of money-making was he ambitious. In the Koppernigks ran a goodly strain of Jewish blood, but a generation before, pressure and expediency seemed to combine, so that the family, as we first see them, were Christians. No soil can grow genius, no seed can produce it--it springs into being in spite of all laws and rules and regulations. "No hovel is safe from it," says Whistler.

The portraits of Copernicus reveal a man of most marked personality: proud, handsome, self-contained, intellectual. The head is massive, eyes full, luminous, wide apart, his nose large and bold, chin strong, the mouth alone revealing a trace of the feminine, as though the man were the child of his mother. This mother had a brother who was a bishop, and the mother's ambition for her boy was that he should eventually follow in the footsteps of this illustrious brother who was known for a hundred miles as a preacher of marked ability.

So we hear of the young man being sent to the University of Cracow, as the preliminary to a great career.

The father bitterly opposed the idea of taking his son out of the practical world of business, and this evidently led to the breach that caused young Nicholas to discard the family name.

That Nicholas did not fully enter into his mother's plans is shown that while at Cracow he devoted himself mostly to medicine. He was so proficient in this that he secured a physician's degree; and having been given leave to practise he revealed his humanity by declining to do so, turning to mathematics with a fine frenzy.

This disposition to drop on a thing, turn loose on it, concentrate, and reduce it to a chaos, is the true distinguishing mark of genius. The difference in men does not lie in the size of their heads, nor in the perfection of their bodies, but in this one sublime ability of concentration--to throw the weight with the blow, live an eternity in an hour--"This one thing I do!"

Copernicus at twenty-one was teaching mathematics at Cracow, and by his extraordinary ability in this one direction had attracted the attention of various learned men. In fact the authorities of the college had grown a bit boastful of their star student, and when visiting dignitaries arrived, young Copernicus was given chalk and blackboard and put through his paces. Problems involving a dozen figures and many fractions were worked out by him with a directness and precision that made him the wonder of that particular part of the world.

The science of trigonometry was invented by Copernicus, and we see that early in his twenties he was well on the heels of it, for he had then arranged a quadrant to measure the height of standing trees, steeples, buildings or mountains. For rest and recreation he painted pictures.

A college professor from Bologna traveling through Cracow met Copernicus, and greatly impressed with his powers, invited him to return with him to Bologna and there give a course of lectures on mathematics.

Copernicus accepted, and at Bologna met the astronomer, Novarra. This meeting was the turning-point of his life. Copernicus was then twenty-three years of age, but in intellect he was a man. He had vowed a year before that he would indulge in no trivial conversation about persons or things--only the great and noble themes should interest him and occupy his attention.

With commonplace or ignorant people he held no converse. He had remarkable beauty of person and great dignity, and his presence at Bologna won immediate respect for him.

Men accept other men at the estimate they place upon themselves.

In listening to lectures by Novarra, he perceived at once how mathematics could be made valuable in calculating the movement of stars.

Novarra taught the Ptolemaic theory of astronomy for the esoteric few. The Church is made up of men, and while priests for the most part are quite content to believe what the Church teaches, yet it has ever been recognized that there was one doctrine for the Few, and another for the Many--the esoteric and the exoteric. The esoteric is an edged tool, and only a very few are fit to handle it. The charge of heresy is only for those who are so foolish as to give out these edged tools to the people. You may talk about anything you want, provided you do not do it; and you may do anything you want, provided you do not talk about it.

The proposition that the earth was flat, had four corners, and the stars were jewels hung in the sky as "signs," and were moved about by angels, was all right for the many, but now and then there were priests who were not content with these child-stories--they wanted truth--and these usually accepted the theories of Ptolemy.

Novarra believed that the earth was a globe; that this globe was the center of the universe, and that around the earth the sun, moon and certain stars revolved. The fixed stars he still regarded as being hung against the firmament, and that this firmament was turned in some mysterious way, en masse.

Copernicus listened silently, but his heart beat fast. He had found something upon which he could exercise his mathematics. He and Novarra sat up all night in the belfry of the cathedral and watched the stars.

They saw that they moved steadily, surely and without caprice. It was all natural, and could be reduced, Copernicus thought, to a mathematical system.

Astrology and astronomy were not then divorced. It was astrology that gave us astronomy. The angel that watched over a star looked after all persons who were born under that star's influence, or else appointed some other angel for the purpose. Every person had a guardian angel to protect him from the evil spirits that occasionally broke out of Hell and came up to earth to tempt men.

Mathematics knows nothing of angels--it only knows what it can prove. Copernicus believed that, if certain stars did move, they moved by some unalterable law of their own. In riding on a boat he observed that the shores seemed to be moving past, and he concluded that a part, at least, of the seeming movements of planets might possibly be caused by the moving of the earth.

In talking with astrologers he perceived that very seldom did they know anything of mathematics. And this ignorance on their part caused him to doubt them entirely.

His faith was in mathematics--the thing that could be proved--and he came to the conclusion that astronomy and mathematics were one thing, and astrology and child-stories another.

He remained at Bologna just long enough to turn the astrologers out of the society of astronomers.

Novarra's lectures on astronomy were given in Latin, and in truth all learning was locked up in this tongue. But astrology and the theological fairy-tales of the people floated free. They were a part of the vagrant hagiology of the roadside preachers, who with lurid imaginations said the things they thought would help carry conviction home and make "believers."

From Bologna Copernicus then moved on to Padua, where he remained two years, teaching and giving lectures. Here he devoted considerable time to chemistry, and on leaving he was honored by being given a degree by the University. Next we find him at Rome, a professor in mathematics and also giving lectures on chemistry. His lectures were not for the populace--they were for the learned few. But they attracted the attention of the best, and were commented upon and quoted by the various other teachers, preachers and lecturers. A daring thinker who expresses himself without reservation states the things that various others know and would like to state if they dared. It is often very convenient when you want a thing said to enclose the matter in quotation-marks. It relieves one from the responsibility of standing sponsor for it, if the hypothesis does not prove popular.

Copernicus was only nineteen years old when Columbus discovered America, but it seems he did not hear of Columbus until he reached Bologna in Fourteen Hundred Ninety-five. At Rome he made various references to Columbus in his lectures; dwelt upon the truth that the earth was a globe; mentioned the obvious fact that in sailing westward Columbus did not sail his ship over the edge of the earth into Hell, as had been prophesied he would.

He also explained that the red sky at sunset was not caused by the reflections from Hell, nor was the sun moved behind a mountain by giant angels at night. Copernicus was a Catholic, as all teachers were, but he had been deceived by the esoteric and the exoteric, and had really thought that the priests and so-called educated men actually desired, for themselves, to know the truth.

At Padua he had learned to read Greek, and had become more or less familiar with Pythagoras, Hipparchus, Aristotle and Plato. He quoted these authors and showed how in some ways they were beyond the present. This was all done in the exuberance of youth, with never a doubt as to the value and the beauty of the Church. But he was thinking more of truth than of the Church, and when a cardinal from the Vatican came to him, and in all kindness cautioned him, and in love explained it was all right for a man to believe what he wished, but to teach others things that were not authorized was a mistake.

Copernicus was abashed and depressed.

He saw then that his lectures had really been for himself--he was endeavoring to make things plain to Copernicus, and the welfare of the Church had been forgotten.

He ceased lecturing for a time, but private pupils came to him, and among them astrologers in disguise, and these went away and told broadcast that Copernicus was teaching that the movements of the stars were not caused by angels, and that "God was being dethroned by a tape-measure and a yardstick." Alchemy had a strong hold upon the popular mind, and these alchemists and astrologers were fortune-tellers and derived a goodly income from the people.

They had their stands in front of all churches and turned in a goodly tithe "for the benefit of the poor."

When the astrologers attacked Copernicus he tried to explain that the heavens were under the reign of natural law, and that so far as he knew there was no direct relationship between the stars and the men upon earth. The answer was, "You yourself foretell the eclipse, and assume to know when a star will be in a certain place a hundred years in advance; now, if you can prophesy about stars, why can't we foretell a man's future?"

Copernicus proudly declined to answer such ignorance, but went on to say that alchemy was a violence to chemistry as much as astrology was to astronomy. In chemistry there were exact results that could be computed by mathematics and foretold; it was likewise so in astronomy.

Copernicus was philosopher enough to know that astrology led to astronomy, and alchemy led to chemistry, but he said all he wished to do was to eliminate error and find the truth, and when we have ascertained the laws of God in reference to these things, we should discard the use of black cats, goggles, peaked hats, red fire and incantations--these things were sacrilege. And the enemy declared that Copernicus was guilty of heresy in saying they were guilty of sacrilege. Moreover, black cats were not as bad as blackboards.

The Pope certainly had no idea of treating Copernicus harshly; in fact, he greatly admired him--but peace was the thing desired. Copernicus was creating a schism, and there was danger that the revenues would be affected. The Pope sent for Copernicus, received him with great honor, blessed him, and suggested that he return at once to his native town of Thorn and there await good news that would come to him soon.

Copernicus was overwhelmed with gratitude--he was in difficulties.

Certain priests had publicly denounced him; others had urged him on to unseemliness in debate; he had stated things he could not prove, even though he knew they were true--but the Pope was his friend! He loved the Church; he felt how necessary it was to the people, and at the last, the desire of his heart was to bless and benefit the world.

He fell on his knees and attempted to kiss the Pope's foot, but the Holy Father offered him his hand instead, smiled on him, stroked his head, and an attendant was ordered to place about his neck a chain of gold with a crucifix that would protect him from all harm. A purse was placed in his hand, and he was sent upon his way relieved, happy--wondering, wondering!

* * * * *

When Copernicus reached his native town of Thorn, the local clergy turned out in a procession to greet him, and a solemn service of thanksgiving was held for his safe return home.

Copernicus was only twenty-seven years of age, and what he had done was not quite clear to his uncle, the bishop, and the other dignitaries, but word had come from the secretary of the Pope that he should be honored, and it was all so done, in faith, love and enthusiasm.

Very shortly after this Copernicus was made Canon of the Cathedral at Frauenburg. The town of Frauenburg has now only about twenty-five hundred people, and it certainly was no larger then. The place is slow, sleepy, and quite off the beaten track of travel.

When Canon Copernicus preached now, it was to a dear, stupid lot of old marketwomen and overworked men and mischievous children. Oratory is a collaboration--let him wax eloquent about the precession of the equinoxes, and prate of Plato and Pythagoras if he wished--no one could understand him! Rome is wise--the crystallized experience of centuries is hers. Responsibility tames a man--marriage, political office, churchly preferment--read history and note how these things have dulled the bright blade of revolution and turned the radical into a Presbyterian professor at Princeton, a staunch upholder of the Established Order!

Plato said that Solar Energy found one of its forms of expression in man. Some men are much more highly charged with it than others; your genius is a man who does things. Do not think to dam up the red current of his life--he may die.

Copernicus set to work practising medicine, and gave his services gratis to the poor, who came for many miles to consult him.

He went from house to house and ordered his people to clean up their back yards, to ventilate their houses, to bathe and be decent and orderly. He devised a system of sewerage, and utilized the belfry of his church as a water-tower so as to get a water pressure from the little stream that ran near the town. The remains of this invention are to be seen there in the church-steeple even unto this day.

King Sigismund of Poland had heard of the attacks made by Copernicus upon the alchemists, and sent for him that he might profit by his advice, for it seems that the King, too, had been having experience with alchemists. In their seeking after a way to make gold out of the baser metals they had actually succeeded. At least they said so, and had made the King believe it.

They had shown the King how he could cheapen his coinage one-half, and "it was just as good!" The King could not tell the difference when the coins were new, but alas! when they went beyond the borders of Poland they could only be passed at one-half their face-value; travelers refused to accept them; and even the merchants at home were getting afraid.

Copernicus analyzed some of this money made for the King by his alchemist friends and found a large alloy of tin, copper and zinc. He explained to the King that by mixing the metals they did not change their nature nor value. Gold was gold, and copper was copper--God had made these things and hid them in the earth and men might deceive some men--a part of the time--but there was always a retribution. Debase your currency, and soon it will cease to pass current. No law can long uphold a fictitious value.

The King urged Copernicus to write a book on the subject of coinage.

The permission of the Pope was secured, and the book written. The work is valuable yet, and reveals a deep insight into the heart of things. The man knew political economy, and foretold that a people who debased their currency debased themselves.

"Money is character," he said, "and if you pretend it is one thing, and it turns out to be another, you lose your reputation and your own self-respect. No government can afford to deceive the governed. If the people lose confidence in their rulers, a new government will spring into being, built upon the ruins of the old. Government and commerce are built on confidence."

Then he went on to show that German gold was valuable everywhere, because it was pure; but Polish gold and Russian gold were below par, because the money had been tampered with, and as no secrets could be kept long, the result was the matter exactly equalized itself, save that Russians and Polanders had in a large degree lost their characters through belief in miracles. Copernicus advocated a universal coinage, to be adopted by all civilized nations, and the amount of alloy should be known and plainly stated, and this alloy should simply be the seigniorage, or what was taken out to cover the cost of mintage.

King Sigismund circulated this valuable book by Copernicus among all the courts of Europe, and it need not be stated that the suggestions made by Copernicus have been adopted by civilized nations everywhere.

* * * * *

The humdrum duties of a country clergyman did not still the intense longing of Copernicus to know and understand the truth. He visited the sick, closed the eyes of the dying, kept his parish register, but his heart was in mathematics, and so there is shown at Thorn an old church register kept by Copernicus, where, in the back, are great rows of figures put down by the Master as he worked at some astronomical problem. In the upper floor of the barn, back of the old dilapidated farmhouse where he lived for forty years, he cut holes in the roof, and also apertures in the sides of the building, through which he watched the movements of the stars. He lived in practical isolation and exile, for the Church had forbidden him to speak in public except upon themes that the Holy Fathers in their wisdom had authorized. None was to invite him to speak, read his writings or hold converse with him, except on strictly church matters.

Copernicus knew the situation--he was a watched man. For him there was no preferment: he knew too much! As long as he kept near home and did his priestly work, all was well; but a trace of ambition or heresy, and he would be dealt with. The Universities and all prominent Churchmen were secretly ordered to leave Copernicus and his vagaries severely alone. But the stars were his companions--they came out for him nightly and moved in majesty across the sky. "They do me great honor," he said; "I am forbidden to converse with great men, but God has ordered for me a procession." When the whole town slept, Copernicus watched the heavens, and made minute records of his observations. He had brought with him from Rome copies made by himself from the works of the prominent Greek astronomers, and the "Almagest" of Ptolemy he knew by heart.

He digested all that had been written on the subject of astronomy; slowly and patiently he tested every hypothesis with his rude and improvised instruments. "Surely God will not damn me for wanting to know the truth about His glorious works," he used to say.

Emerson once wrote this: "If the stars came out but once in a thousand years, how men would adore!" But before he had written this, Copernicus had said: "To look up at the sky, and behold the wondrous works of God, must make a man bow his head and heart in silence. I have thought and studied, and worked for years, and I know so little--all I can do is to adore when I behold this unfailing regularity, this miraculous balance and perfect adaptation. The majesty of it all humbles me to the dust."

It was ostracism and exile that gave Copernicus the leisure to pursue his studies in quiet, undiverted, undisturbed. He was relieved from financial pinch, having all he needed for his simple, homely wants. The mental distance that separated him from his parishioners made him free, and the order that he should not travel and that none should visit him made him master of his time. There were no interruptions--"God has set me apart," he wrote, "that I may study and make plain His works." But still, that he could not make his discoveries known was a constant, bitter disappointment to him.

In astronomy he found a means of using his mighty mathematical genius for his own pleasure and amusement. The Pope had, in seeking to subdue him, merely supplied the exact conditions he required to do his work--yet neither knew it. So mighty is Destiny: we work for one thing and fail to get it, but in our efforts we find something better.

The simple, hard-working gardeners with whom Copernicus lived, had a reverent awe for the great man; they guessed his worth, but still had suspicions of his sanity. His nightly vigils they took for a sort of religious ecstasy, and a wholesome fear made them quite willing not to do anything that might disturb him.

So passed the days away, and from a light-hearted, ambitious man, Copernicus had grown old and bowed, and nearly blind from constant watching of the stars and writing at night.

But his book, "The Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies," was at last complete. For forty years he had worked at it, and for twenty-seven years, he himself says, not a day or a night had passed without his having added something to it.

He felt that he had in this book told the truth. If men wanted to know the facts about the heavens they would find them here. He had approached the subject with no preconceived ideas; he had ever been willing to renounce a theory when he found it wrong. He knew what all other great astronomers had taught, and out of them all he had built a Science of Astronomy that he knew would stand secure.

But what should he do with all this mass of truth he had discovered? It was in his own brain, and it was in the three thousand pages of this book, which had been rewritten five times. In a few years at most, his brain would be stilled in death; and in five minutes, ignorance and malice might reduce the book to ashes, and the forty years' labor of Copernicus--working, dreaming, calculating, weeping, praying--would all go for naught and be but a tale that is told. Others might have lived such lives and known as much as he, and all was lost!

To send the book frankly to Rome and ask the Censor for the privilege to publish it, was out of the question entirely--the request would be refused, the manuscript destroyed, and his own life might be in danger.

To publish it at home without the consent of his Bishop would be equally dangerous. There would be a bonfire of every copy in the public square; for in this volume, all that the priests taught of astronomy had been contradicted and refuted.

And then it occurred to him to send the manuscript to the free city of Nuremberg, the home of science, art and free speech, where men could print what they thought was truth--Nuremberg, the home of Albrecht Durer. With the book he sent a bag of gold, his savings of a lifetime, to pay the expense of printing the volume and putting it before the world.

To better protect himself, Copernicus wrote a preface, dedicating the book to the Pope Paul, thus throwing himself upon the mercy of His Holiness. He would not put the work out anonymously, as his friends in Nuremberg, for his own safety, had advised. And neither would he flee to Nuremberg for protection; he would stay at home--he was too old to travel now--besides, he had forgotten how to talk and act with men of talent.

How would Rome receive the book? He could only guess--he could only guess.

The months went by, and fear, anxiety and suspense had their sway. He was stricken with fever. In his delirium he called aloud, "The book--tell me--they surely have not burned it--you know I wrote no word but truth--oh, how could they burn my book!"

But on May Twenty-third, Fifteen Hundred Forty-three, a messenger came from Nuremberg.

He carried a copy of the printed book--he was admitted to the sick-room, and placed in the hands of the stricken man the volume. A gleam of sanity came to Copernicus. He smiled, and taking the book gazed upon it, stroked its cover as though caressing it, opened it and turned the leaves. Then closing the book and holding it to his heart, he closed his eyes, and sank to sleep, to awake no more.

His body was buried with simple village honors, and laid to rest beneath the floor of the Cathedral where he had so long ministered, side by side with a long line of priests. On the little slab that marked his resting-place no mention was made of the mighty work he had done for truth. There were fears that when the character of his book was known, the grave of Copernicus would not remain undisturbed, and so the inscription on the headstone was simply this: "I ask not the grace accorded to Paul; not that given to Peter; give me only the favor which Thou didst show to the thief on the cross."

HUMBOLDT

The actual miracle of the Universe is the invariableness of Law.
Under like conditions a like result must follow, and upon this rock
is the faith of the Scientists built.

--_The Cosmos_

HUMBOLDT

The Baron and Baroness von Hollwede were not happily married.

The Baroness had intellect, spirit, aspiration, with an appreciation of all that was best in art, music and the world of thought. As to the Baron, he had drunk life's wine to the lees and pronounced the draft bitter. He was a heavy dragoon with a soul for foxhounds. Later, when gout got to twinging him, he contented himself with cards and cronies.

And then Destiny, like a novelist who does not know what to do with a character, sent him on an excursion across the River Styx.

This was a good move all round, and the only accommodating action in which the Baron ever had a part. He left a large estate, not being able to take it along.

There are two kinds of widows, the bereaved and the relieved. In India no widow is allowed to remarry. The canons of the Episcopal Church forbid any widow or widower to remarry whose former partner is living. A member of the Catholic Church who makes a marital mistake is not allowed to rectify it. Yet Nature, sometimes, as if to prove the foolishness of fearsome little man, justifies that of which man hotly disapproves.

To be a widow of thirty-six, fair of face and comely in form, to own a beautiful home and have an income greater than you can spend, and still not enough to burden you--what nobler ambition!

The Baroness had a little encumbrance--a son aged ten. I would like to tell of his career, but alas, of him history is silent, save that he was heir to some of his father's proclivities, grew up, became an army officer and passed into obscurity in middle life, dishonored and unsung.

Such a widow as the Baroness von Hollwede is not apt to mourn for long. She was courted by many, but it was Major Humboldt who found favor in her heart. I assume that all of my gentle readers have in them some of the saltness of time, so that details may safely be omitted--let imagination bridge the interesting gap.

The Major was a few years younger than the lady, but like the gallant gentleman that he was, he swore i' faith before the notary that they were of the same age, just as Robert Browning did when officially interrogated as to the age of Elizabeth Barrett. Thomas Brackett Reed avowed that no gentleman ever weighed over two hundred pounds, and I also maintain no gentleman ever married a woman older than himself.

The marriage of Major Humboldt and the Baroness von Hollwede was a most happy mating that fully justified the venture. The Major had done his work bravely in the Seven Years' War, and was now an attache of the King's Court--a man of means, of intellect, and of many strong and beautiful virtues. After the marriage he became known as Baron von Humboldt, and as to just how he succeeded to the noble title let us not be curious--his wife undoubtedly bestowed it on him, good and generous woman that she was.

They lived in the romantic Castle Tegel, near Berlin, and separated from the city by a park, where the dark pines still tower aloft and murmur their secrets to the night breeze.

Tegel is a most beautiful place; it was first a hunting-lodge occupied by Frederick the Great. It is shut out from the world by its high stone walls; and in its dim, dense woods, one might easily imagine he was far indeed from the madding crowd.

Here there were two sons born to the Baron and Baroness--two years apart. One of these sons sleeps now beneath the turret where he first saw the light, and from which he made others see the light as long as he lived.

In Goethe's "Faust" is an allusion to a mysterious legend that had its rise in storied Tegel. On May Eighteenth, in the year Seventeen Hundred Seventy-eight. Goethe came here, walking over from Berlin, dined, and walked on to Potsdam. But before he left he saw two beautiful boys, aged eight and ten, playing beneath the spreading Tegel trees. The boys remembered the event and wrote of it in their journal, mentioning the kindly pats on their heads and the prophecy that they would grow up and be great men.

Goethe was always patting boys on the head and saying graceful things, and it is doubtful whether his prophecy was more than a mere commonplace. But Goethe always claimed it was divine prophecy. These boys were William and Alexander von Humboldt.

History does not supply another instance of two brothers attaining the intellectual height reached by Alexander and William von Humboldt. This being so, it seems meet that we should tarry a little to inspect the method adopted in the education of these boys--something that the educated world for the most part has not done.

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This world of ours, round like an orange and slightly flattened at the poles, has produced only five men who were educated. Of course all education is comparative; but these five are so beyond the rest of mankind that they form a class by themselves.

An educated man means a developed man--a man rounded on every side of his nature. We are aware of no limit to which the mind of man may evolve; other men may appear who will surpass the Immortal Five, but this fact remains: none that we know have. Great men, so-called, are usually specialists: clever actors, individuals with a knack, talented comedians--who preach, carve, paint, orate, fight, manipulate, manage, teach, write, perform, coerce, bribe, hypnotize, accomplish, and get results. There are great financiers, sea-captains, mathematicians, football players, engineers, bishops, wrestlers, runners, boxers, and players on zithern-strings. But these are not necessarily very great men, any more than poets, painters and pianists, with wonderful hirsute effects and strange haberdashery are great men.

For it is intellect and emotion expanded in every direction that give the true title to greatness. Judged in this way, how rare is the educated man--five in six thousand years! And yet one of these five educated men had a brother nearly as great as he.

Alexander von Humboldt was past fifty before the world of thinking men realized that he had outstripped his brother William--and Alexander would never admit he had.

These two men, handsome in face, form and feature: strong in body and poised in mind, with souls athirst to realize and to know--happy men, living long lives of useful effort--surely should be classed as educated persons.

And in passing, let us note that all education is preparatory--it is life that gives the finals, not the college. The education of the von Humboldt boys was the Natural Method--the method advocated by Rousseau--the education by play and work so combined that study never becomes irksome nor work repulsive. Rousseau said, "Make a task repugnant and the worker will forever quit it as soon as the pressure that holds him to it is removed."

The parents of Alexander and William von Humboldt carefully studied the new plan of education that was at that time being advocated by some of the best professors at Berlin. "A child must have a teacher," said Jean Jacques, "but a professional teacher is apt to become the slave of his profession, and when this occurs he has separated himself from life, and therefore to that degree is unfitted to teach."

A school should not be a preparation for life: a school should be life. The Kindergarten Idea, among other things, suggests that a child should never know he is in school.

The discipline is kept out of sight, and the youngster finds himself a part of the busy life. He blends in with the others, and works, plays and sings under the wise and loving care of his "other mother," the teacher. He is living, not simply preparing to live. All life should be joyous, spontaneous, natural. The Rousseau Idea, which was modified and refined by Froebel, is the utilization of the propensity to play.

Major von Humboldt found a man who was saturated with the true Froebel spirit, although this was before Froebel was born.

The man's name was Heinrich Campe. Heinrich was hired to superintend the education of the Humboldt boys. That is to say, he was to become comrade, friend, counselor, fellow-scholar, playmate and teacher.

Play needs direction as well as work. Campe played with the boys. They lived with Nature--made lists of all the trees at Tegel, drew sketches of the leaves and fruit, calculated the height of trees, measured them at the base, and cut them down occasionally, first sitting in judgment on the case, and deciding why a certain tree should be removed, thus getting a lesson in scientific forestry.

They became acquainted with the bugs, beetles, birds and squirrels. They cared for the horses, cattle and fowls, and best of all they learned to wait on themselves.

Campe told them tales of history--of Achilles, Pericles and Cæsar. Then they studied Greek, that they might read of Athens in the language of the men who made Athens great. They translated "Robinson Crusoe" into the German language, and Campe's translation of "Robinson Crusoe" is today a German classic. It was all natural--interesting, easy. The day was filled with work and play, and joyous tales of what had been said by others in days agone.

"Teach only what you know, and never that which you merely believe," said Rousseau.

There is still a cry that religion should be taught in the public schools. If we ask, "What religion?" the answer is, "Ours, of course!"

Religious dogma, being a matter of belief, was taught to the Humboldts as a part of history.

So these boys very early became acquainted with the dogmas of Confucianism, Mohammedanism, Christianity. They separated, compared and analyzed, and saw for themselves that dogmatic religions were all much alike. To know all religions is to escape slavery to any. In studying the development of races these boys saw that a certain type of religion fits a certain man in a certain stage of his evolution, and so perhaps to that degree religion is necessary. An ethnologist is never a Corner Grocery Infidel. The C.G.I. is very apt to be converted at the first revival, outrivaling all other "seekers," and when warm weather comes, falling from grace and dropping easily into scofferdom.

The Humboldts, like Thoreau, never had any quarrel with God, and they were never tempted to go forward to the Mourners' Bench.

Origin and destiny did not trouble them; predestination and justification by faith were not even in their curriculum; foreordination and baptism were to them problems not to be taken seriously.

By studying religions in groups and incidentally, they learned to distinguish the fetish in each. They read Greek mythology side by side with Judean mythology and noted similarities. The intent of Tutor Campe was to give these boys a scientific education. Science is only classified commonsense. To be truly scientific is to know differences--to distinguish between this and that. Every successful farmer has traveled a long way into science, for science deals with the maintenance of life. To know soils, animals and vegetation is to be scientific.

But when the average farmer learns to transmute compost into grass and grain, and these into beef, he usually stops, content. To be a scientist in the true sense, one must love knowledge for its own sake, and not merely for what it will bring on market-day, and so the Humboldts were led on through the stage of wanting to make money, to the stage of wanting to know the why and wherefore. It will be seen that the education of the Humboldts was what the Boylston Professor of English at Harvard calls "faddism, or the successful effort at flabbiness." Our Harvard friend thinks that education should be a discipline--that it should be difficult and vexatious, and that happiness, spontaneity and exuberance are the antitheses and the foes of learning. To him grim earnestness, silence, sweat and lamp-smoke are preferable to sunshine and joyous, useful work so wisely directed that the pupil thinks it play. He believes that to be sincere we must be serious. In these latter-day objections there is nothing new. Socrates met them all; Rousseau heard the cry of "fad"; Heyne, Pestalozzi, Campe, Knuth and Froebel met the carpist and answered him reason for reason, just as Copernicus, Bruno and Galileo told the reason the earth revolved. The professional teacher who can do nothing but teach--the college professor who is a college professor and nothing else--hates the Natural Method man about as ardently as the person who wears a paste diamond hates the lapidary.

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Heinrich Campe was the tutor of the Humboldts for two years, when he entered the employ of the King as Commissioner of Education.

After this, however, he continued to spend one day a week at Tegel for some time. He loved the boys as his own, and his hope for their future never relaxed. Possibly his interest was not wholly disinterested--with the help of these lads he was working out and proving his pedagogic theories.

When Campe resigned his immediate tutorship he was allowed to select his successor, and he chose a young man by the name of Christian Knuth.

The mother was a member of this little university of four persons; Knuth, of course, was a member, for he always considered himself more of a student than a teacher.

When Campe resigned in favor of Knuth his action was in degree prompted by his love and consideration for the boys. Knuth was only a little past twenty, and was able to enter into the out-of-door sports and work of the youngsters better than the older man. Knuth was their hero--together they rode horseback, climbed mountains, excavated tunnels, mined for ore, built miniature houses. "Knuth made every good thing in Berlin available to us," wrote William years afterward; "we visited stores, factories, barracks and schools, and became familiar with a thousand commonplace things never taught in schools and colleges."

When Alexander was twelve years old, the father died. This would have been a severe blow to the boys were it not for Knuth, who seemed to stand to them more as the real parent than did Major von Humboldt.

Knuth was a businessman of no mean ability. The Baroness now trusted him with all her financial affairs. He called on the boys to help him in the details of business, so the keeping of accounts and the economical handling of money were lessons they learned early in life.

When Alexander was seventeen and William nineteen, the mother and Knuth decided that the boys should have the advantages of university life. Accordingly they were duly entered at the University of Frankfort as "special students."

Knuth also entered as a student in the class with them. Special students, let it be known, are usually those who have failed to pass the required examinations. In this instance, Alexander and William were beyond many of their classmates in some things, but in others they were deficient. Especially had their education in the dead languages been "neglected," so it is quite likely they could not have passed the examinations had they attempted it.

It should also be explained that special students are not eligible to diplomas or degrees.

But Campe and Knuth did not believe the nerve-racking plan of examinations wise, any more than it is wisdom to pull up a plant and examine the roots to see how it prospers. Neither did they prize a college degree.

They knew full well that a college degree is no proof of excellence of character; to them a degree was too cheap a thing to deviate in one's orbit to secure. They were after bigger game.

At Frankfort, Knuth and his charges lived in the family of Professor Loffler, "so as to rub off a little knowledge from this learned man." They studied history, philosophy, law, political economy and natural history. We would say their method was desultory, were it not for the fact that they were always thorough in all that they undertook. They were simply three boys together, intent on getting their money's worth.

William was a little better student than Alexander, and was the leader; he was larger in stature and seemed to have more vitality.

Two years were spent at the University of Frankfort, and then our trio moved on to the University of Gottingen, where there were distinguished lecturers on Natural History and Archeology. Antiquity especially interested the boys, and the evolution and history of races were followed with animation.

William took especially to philosophy as expressed in the writings of Kant, while Alexander developed a love for botany and what he called "the science of out-of-doors."

Two years at Gottingen, following the bent of their minds and listening only to those lectures they liked, and they moved on to Jena.

Here they were in the Goethe country. Soon there were overtures from Berlin that they enter the service of the Government. These overtures were set in motion by Campe, who, however, kept out of sight in the matter, and when accused, stoutly declared that it was every man's duty to help himself, and that he personally had never helped any one get a position and never would.

William was twenty-three and Alexander twenty-one. William was gracious and graceful in manner and made himself at home in the best society; Alexander was studious, reserved and inclined to be shy.

An invitation came that they should visit Weimar and spend some weeks in that little world of art and letters created by Goethe and Schiller. To William this was very tempting; but Alexander saw at Weimar scant opportunity to study botany and geology.

Besides that, he felt that sooner or later he would drift into the employ of the Government, following in his father's footsteps. His ambition was practical mining, with a taste for finance.

The brothers kissed each other good-by, and one went to Weimar to assist Schiller in editing a magazine that did not pay expenses, to bask in the sunshine of the great Goethe, and incidentally to secure a wife.

The other started on a geological excursion, and this excursion was to continue through life, and make of the man the greatest naturalist that the world had seen since Aristotle lived, two thousand years before.

* * * * *

Humboldt's first book was on the geological formation of the Rhine, published when he was twenty-six years old. The work was so complete and painstaking that it led to his being appointed to the position of "Assessor of Mines" at Berlin. This was the same office that Swedenborg once held in Scandinavia.

For the benefit of our social-science friends, it is rather interesting to note that at this time in Europe nearly all mines belonged to the Government.

An individual might own the surface, and up to the sky, but his claim did not go to the center of the earth. Iron, coal, copper, silver and gold were largely mined, and the Government operated the mines direct, or else leased them on a percentage.

I am told that in America all mining is done by individuals or private companies, and that four-fifths of all mining companies have no mines at all--merely samples of ores, blueprints, photographs and prospects. The genus promoter is a very modern production, and is a creation Humboldt never knew; the "salting" of mines was out of his province, and mining operations carried on exclusively in sky-scrapers was a combination he never guessed.

Whether society will ever take a turn backward, and the whole people own and control the treasures deposited by Nature in the earth, is a question I will leave to my Marxian colleagues to determine.