THE PASSING OF A MASTER MIND.

To the Editor of The Nation:

  Sir: I desire to record a word of tribute to one of the master minds of America. The recent death of Charles S. Peirce removes an heroic figure from the field of American learning. Living for the most part in retirement, he was known to a relatively small circle. Yet where known, his name was spoken with exalted respect; and his fame, critically appraised, placed him with the chosen few of any generation. How far he sought and failed to find the wider recognition that falls to those whose labors are in fields open to public approbation, how far he did not care to pursue the accredited steps to preferment and recognition, I cannot say. Yet this aspect of his career is significant.

  My acquaintance with Mr. Peirce began in 1882 when I came as a graduate student to Johns Hopkins University. He was there lecturing on "The Algebra of Logic" — a subject which he in large measure established in this country. He had interested certain able students — all of them since distinguished in various fields — in his explorations into a broad domain of thought; and of this enterprise a volume of studies by himself and his pupils bears record. In those days there was gathered in Baltimore a group of scholars and productive intellectual workers that would have been exceptional in any scholarly community. Their names would suggest the notable contributions of American scholarship in their generation. Yet among them the impression of Mr. Peirce stands forth most prominently primus inter pares. The impression that I retain of his analyses of logical and philosophical problems is that of observing a plummet line descending through troubled waters foot by foot, sounding the depths, avoiding the weeds and the shoals, and reaching an undiscovered bottom; for to the student many of the problems in a controversial sea seemed bottomless. It was not argument, but discovery.

  It was Mr. Peirce who introduced me to the possibility of an experimental study of a psychological problem. He provided the problem, the instruments which I set up in my room, the method, and the mode of reaching the results; these were printed over our joint names. He also introduced me to the mode of attack upon larger psychological problems by methods of statistical inquiry. He gathered about him a group of five or six students and proposed a study of "great men." He drew up the questionnaire; we gathered and collated the results. The work was not finished; though I was permitted to publish one or two aspects of the material in brief papers. My personal indebtedness gave me the opportunity to gauge the measure of the man. Only one other produced upon me an equal impression of original greatness. I refer to William James. The two men may well be associated, for each held the other in high regard. Professor James recognized In Charles Peirce the true founder of Pragmatism, a way of thinking which James made popular, the significance of which he expounded. If, in addition, it be remembered that these logical, psychological, and philosophical pursuits were in a sense avocational, and that Mr. Peirce was for a long time actively connected with the Geodetic Survey, was a physicist and mathematician by profession, the scope of his attainments will be more truly perceived. In a sense he represents the American Helmholtz.

  I do not know that Mr. Peirce ever held any academic position other than the lectureship for a few years at Johns Hopkins University. That his was the personal temperament that may well be called difficult may be admitted; such is the disposition of genius. It cannot but remain a sad reflection upon the organization of our academic Interest that we find it difficult, or make it so, to provide places for exceptional men within the academic fold. Politically as educationally, we prefer the safe men to the brilliant men, and exact a versatile mediocrity of qualities that makes the individual organizable. All this has its proper place and is doubtless more or less inevitable, even sound; but the penalty paid for safety is too heavy, when it excludes the use of rarer gifts, the choice product of exceptional power of sustained thought. Of this lamentable lack of efficiency — to turn the sting of an abused word against itself — Mr. Peirce is not the only example. Other master minds knocked in vain at academic portals, and were refused as too elect. Or, more truly stated, the small group of their liberal-minded friends within the hallowed precincts failed to persuade the authorities to adjust methods to men. Certainly it remains true for all time that no more effective stimulus to promising young minds can be found than to give them the opportunity of contact with master minds in action. The service that a small group of such men can perform is too fine, too imponderable, to be measured; and likewise too intangible to impress its value upon the judgment of those with whom these issues commonly lie. Yet nothing would have shown better the greatness of a great University than to find a place in it for rare men like Charles S. Peirce. His memory invites not only the personal tribute, but Is a reminder of our neglect of the true worth of genius.

Joseph Jastrow.  

  The University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis., May 6.