- IN MEMORIAM.
- PROF. JAMES H. EATON, Ph.D.
- Late Professor of Chemistry and Physics in
Beloit College.
- By. T. C. CHAMBERLIN
- Once and again, a seventh time and an eighth, has our Society
been called upon to lament the
- departure of an esteemed and honored member.
- An ARMITAGE, an ENGLEMAN, a FOSTER, a LAPHAM, a STIMPSON,
a SMITH and a
- McDILL have passed in turn from our number and have left
vacancies we may not hope to fill, losses we may not hope to
repair. Esteemed and mourned, as these have been, the more esteemed
and the more lamented as we have known them the more intimately,
our sorrow is no less profound, our bereavement is even yet sadder,
as we realize the loss of a younger and no less earnest co-laborer,
the devoted EATON.
- The 21st of June, 1842, marked the beginning, and the morning
of the 5th of January, 1877,
- beheld the close of the life of Prof. James H. EATON, a span
of thirty-four years - twenty-five years of preparation, nine
years of work.
- To his father, at once a scholar, a teacher and an author,
he owed much of that firm intellectual
- foundation upon which he erected so true and trustworthy
a scholarship. His early training was received in the earth's
best and truest university, the home, a cultured, Christian home.
To this was added the vigorous discipline of Phillip's Academy,
the wider culture of Amherst College, and the technical training
of Gottingen University. The fruitage of these rare opportunities
was everywhere manifest in the mental acquisitions of Prof. EATON.
His academic scholarship was thorough and accurate, firm and
solid. There was no weakness or unsoundness in the foundation.
We could admire the symmetrical shaft, the ornate capital, and
the chaste entablature of the intellectual column, with no misgiving
lest a weak or crumbling pedestal should work its ruin.
- His culture was broad and catholic. Because he was a chemist,
he did not find it necessary to
- despise the linguist. Because he traced and taught the history
of an atom, he did not deprecate the merits of those who taught
the history of man, or of his institutions. Because he could
give visible demonstration of the laws of the physical elements,
he did not disparage the more occult sanctions of civil, moral
and religious laws. Because he dealt with the material, he did
not scorn the spiritual.
- While not an omnivorous student, the bounds of his special
investigations did not constitute for him
- the horizon of truth. He believed in the rotundity of the
intellectual world; that, to whatever eminence, as an explorer
of truth, he might climb, and however much his vision might thereby
be amplified, there was yet beyond a wider circumference, and,
however antipodal some phenomena might seem, they were still
embraced in the sphericity of truth. How often in our judgment
of truth do we forget that the completeness and perfection of
the whole involves contrast and antagonism of the parts.
- These enlarged views found expression in the opinions and
efforts of Prof. EATON as an educator.
- While an enthusiastic devotee of science, thoroughly impressed
with its value as an educational agency, he at the same time
fully recognized the importance of co-ordinate literary, ethical
and aesthetical culture. He extended neither sympathy nor fellowship
toward the educational one-ideaism that finds expression in the
average scientific course. It was largely due to his influence
that the so-called Scientific course of Beloit College was abolished,
while he gave a hearty support to the broader and more symmetrical
Philosophical course, which is producing so much richer fruit.
As an educator he despised narrowness, whether it were vertical
or horizontal, whether it rose from building upon a constricted
foundation or from the tenuity of superficial diffuseness, and
so he stood opposed alike to efforts to confine education to
a single or a few lines of thought, on the one hand, and attempts,
on the other hand, to spread the curriculum over the whole surface
of knowledge without giving thorough or adequate instruction
in any department of it.
- One of the most prominent characteristics of Prof. EATON,
as a scientist and as a man, was his
- perfect sincerity and scrupulous conscientiousness. A worshiper
of the truth, he spurned hypocrisy. A firm believer in the potency
and permanence of truth, he scorned to erect a fabric of fallacy
for personal or political purposes. If error marked his views,
it was the error of mistake, and not the aberration of guile.
If, as all original investigators do, he gathered misconceptions,
mingled with his gathering of facts, they were no sooner discovered
than cast aside, however much they may have been interwoven with
the fabric of his thought, and however much his personal feelings
may have been involved by their publication. It requires courage
and a conscience to do this.
- His mental vision was marked by clearness and accuracy, the
outgrowth in part of native
- endowments, and in no small part, we judge, of that conscientiousness
we so much admired. How easy it is to deflect our intellectual
sight and warp the native integrity of our judgment. The rays
of truth have come to few through purer and clearer lens or one
kept more perfect by conscientious care.
- Patient industry marked all his endeavors and secured for
him honors as a student, respect and
- confidence as a teacher, and esteem as a scientist. Painstaking
preparation for every undertaking was a conspicuous trait. The
summation of his life is but a type of his daily habit - twenty-five
years of preparation, nine years of work.
- To these mental and moral characters there was added religious
belief and religious culture. He
- seemed to us to exemplify in an eminent degree the true attitude
of faith and science. They appeared the right hand and the left
hand of his being; set over against each other, indeed, antagonizing
each other's action in a sense, yet both working together in
mutual confidence and love for the good of the whole being.
- His religious views never seemed to hamper his scientific
conceptions, nor his science circumscribe
- the domain of his faith. He never seemed to hope or fear
that his crucible would analyze the human soul, but in quiet
and courageous trust he lived a true scientist and a true Christian.
- His scientific labors have been so interwoven with the history
of this Society that they do not need
- formal memorial here. We but repeat the spontaneous judgment
of those most intimately associated with his investigations,
as well as those who have listened to his productions, when we
characterize them in terms of high esteem and admiration.
-
- [Taken from "Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy
of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, Vol. IV, 1876-1877" (c)1879
David Atwood, Madison, pp. 314-316]
Courtesy of Lori
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