|
Address at Memorial Exercises by Alexander G. Eells The following address was given at the dedication ceremony for the LeConte Memorial in Yosemite Valley, 1904. It has fallen to me to take part to-day, on behalf of the Alumni of the University of California. To say what the name LeConte signifies and stands for to me, or to any other of the older graduates, is far beyond my powers of expression. "Dr. John" and "Professor Joe"! The names call up images of the springtime of one's life, with its freshness and vividness, when all was eager anticipation, and a rosy haze veiled the difficulties and dangers - of the chivalric period, with its rainbows of promises and its sowing of the seeds of future achievements. Dr. John I met unawares during my entrance examinations, those days of dread to the stripling applicant for admission from a country school. Restless from nervous apprehension I had wandered to the end of the old "dummy" track toward Oakland, and was sitting at the station, waiting for the car to take me back to Berkeley, when a most kindly old gentleman sat down beside me and drew me into conversation. If he had been my own father, his sympathetic interest could not have been greater, nor his words more full of cheer and encouragement. the incident is amongst the most vivid of my college recollections. Professor Joe I first met, soon afterwards, at one of the home gatherings which were common then. I cannot explain the fascination which led me shyly to follow him about, to listen whenever he spoke, nor the thrill of his words when he chanced to speak to me -for he neglected no one. No more can I describe or explain the charm of a good woman, but I know that Professor Joe had it; and that with it he had also that nobility of spirit which commands respect, loyalty, and devotion. It is not so much what he said nor what he taught that lives in my memory. The man impressed himself. My most distinct recollection of his teaching os of the substance of a lecture on the importance of scientific methods - those "tools of thought." The idea was new to me at the time, and striking. Yet that idea seems as little connected with himself as though gleamed from an encyclopedia. In himself, he was far above, and he inspired thoughts far above any mere method,- thoughts for which words are too coarse and too scant. In this was his true greatness; and however valuable his scientific work, it cannot in the mind of any of his one-time students be compared in importance with his personal influence nor with his spiritual radiance. There are keen and brilliant minds that are yet as distant and as cold as Arcturus with reference to human emotions. Men of science especially are apt to deem it a merit that their thinking is impersonal, uninfluenced by considerations of the consequences to merely human interests. Their admirably logical conclusions are held and taught with a lofty disregard, and sometimes disdain, of the pity of it. They are more interested in the "success" of the operation than in the life of the patient. The student at our colleges, and even the average man of affairs of these days, has his impulses and instincts curbed and his sympathies blunted by certain abstract and wholly unemotional doctrines which are dignified and sanctified with the name of laws - the law of wages, the law of supply and demand, the law of population and subsistence, the law of the survival of the fittest, and the rest. These do credit to the human mind as a thinking machine, an intellectual engine, but are hardly creditable as ideals for an immortal spirit, whose wealth is not in the abundance of the things it possesses here but cannot take into the hereafter. Fortunate is the institution of learning whose influential teachers are men, rather than dispensers of formulae; men whose measure of success is the effect upon the character of the student rather than conformity with abstract laws. Fortunate indeed also are the students whose impelling ideas, however severely scientific, are yet alive, not excavated from books, but throbbing with the human grace of such a teacher as Joseph LeConte - alive to pity, and to kindness, and to the service of mankind. Professor Joe was a scientist, but science to him was not merely clods and beasts and laws and logic. Human nature, human ambitions, human affections he rated far above these. For him science was but the stepping-stool for aspirations and for ideals which do not halt at the grave - which indeed can come to full fruition only beyond the grave. He knew well, and he made his hearers know, that scientific methods are only contrivances, man-made artifices, to be made us of where useful; but that to be bound by them is to be enslaved by one's own servants. In the great crises of life it is not any of the "ologies" that save. It is the homely truths consecrated by the experience of the whole race of man, and embodied in the words mother, sister, wife, children, friends. Neither the Greek Sage nor the Galilean Prophet taught science. It is fitting that we should dedicate this memorial in this unpretentious way. It is entirely in keeping with the simple, unaffected character of him to whose memory we do reverence. Around us are the scenes he loved. Yonder dome holds up its massive head doing honor to his name. To us all the surroundings are enriched by associations derived from him. Like him, they hold themselves grandly superior to the trivialities and artifices of conventional life, and to its petty distinctions. These mountains are hospitable to all alike. As the President of the Sierra Club puts it, when we come to the mountains we come home - home from the hollow pageants, the narrow conventions, the whited sepulchers - home to the peace and calm of the spirit. In his autobiography Professor Joe tells us that at one time he thought seriously of joining the ministry; but found his calling elsewhere, - not to this regret, - for, as he says: "One may be a preacher of righteousness in more ways than one." His life-work demonstrates that there is no more effective way than just to be true, stoutly and sturdily true, to one's higher self, to one's ideals. This, after all, is the only way to make those ideals animate and forceful in the practical world. Mere preaching about them cannot give them vitality nor influence, any more than reading about it in a book can impart what Nature has in store for those who set foot upon her mountains. These sublime surrounds are attuned to what is noblest in us. Through them, voiceless Nature is preaching righteousness. He stands for it stoutly and massively, and she needs no ritual, and she needs no artifice. So he that hath the sublime in his soul, let him preach righteousness by living in forth in its native simplicity, stoutly and sturdily. He shall awaken a responsive chord in all unperverted natures, and a multitude shall call him blessed. Let us dedicate this simple lodge to this purpose, to this ministry. Here our beloved teacher came again and again, as one comes home, for cheer and for aid. Hither let us turn as often as we may, not only for what we may gain of good from the sermons in these stones, but still more for the higher, more quickening inspirations from a life true to itself and in touch with Nature.
The LeConte Memorial Lodge still operates in Yosemite Valley today, due to the contributions of those who share Joseph LeConte's love of Yosemite. For more information, contact: Winter: Summer: Up to Top |
