Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON 
 
 FEBRUARY 9, 1850 
 JULY 10, 1897 
 
 Twilight and evening bell, 
 
 And after that the dark ! 
 And may there be no sadness of farewell, 
 
 When I embark ; 
 
 For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place 
 
 The flood may bear me far, 
 I hope to see my Pilot face to face 
 
 When I have crost the bar." 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 1898
 
 EAGLE PRESS 
 BROOKLYN-NEW YORK
 
 NDEX. 
 
 Barrett, George C 143 
 
 . Beecher, Rev. Henry Ward 135 
 
 Botta, Anne C. L 167 
 
 Bridgman, Herbert L 109 
 
 Brown, William Reynolds 115 
 
 Brownell, Eva P 123 
 
 Brownell, William C 173 
 
 / Bryce, John 178 
 
 Burrows, George B 117 
 
 Chadwick, Rev. John W 21, 136, 140, 166 
 
 Chickering, Joseph H 118 
 
 Clark, A. Inglis 129 
 
 Clews, Henry 175 
 
 Creevey, John K 114 
 
 Davidson, Thomas 145, 154 
 
 Deming, Horace E 117 
 
 Donald, Rev. E. Winchester 182 
 
 Eastman, John H 15, 127 
 
 Eggleston, Edward 79, 108 
 
 Fawcett, Edgar 169 
 
 Flagg, John H 130 
 
 Goodman, Richard, Jr. . 126 
 
 Hewett, W. T '. 125, 145 
 
 Holbrook, M. L ... 112 
 
 Hotchkiss, H. D 184 
 
 Hutton, Lawrence in 
 
 Janes, Lewis G 49 
 
 Jerome, William T 180 
 
 Kaufman, Edward S 37 
 
 Logan, Walter S 108 
 
 Lowell, Sidney V 179 
 
 Ludlow, Rev. James M 109 
 
 Lydecker, Charles E 128
 
 IV INDEX. 
 
 Lyman, Rev. Albert J 135 
 
 Mathews, Albert 167 
 
 Matthews, Brander 76, 181 
 
 McClurg, A. C 146, 154 
 
 McKelway, Hon. St. Clair 29 
 
 Oakley, Henry S 153 
 
 Palmer, Courtlandt 141 
 
 Roosevelt, Theodore 184 
 
 Sandford, Elliot 185 
 
 Seelye, Rev. Julius H., D.D 137, 147, 160, 169 
 
 Shearman, Thomas G 140 
 
 Shepard, Edward M 181 
 
 Stedman, Edmund C 45 
 
 Stephen, Leslie 134 
 
 Sterne, Simon 118 
 
 Stockton, Frank R in 
 
 Stoddard, F. H 113, 143 
 
 Straus, Isidor 183 
 
 Straus, Oscar S 95, 123, 163, 170 
 
 Taylor, Hon. John A 60, 174 
 
 Thompson, Charles Miner 113 
 
 Tredwell, Daniel M 156 
 
 Underwood, B. F 89, 121, 172, 174 
 
 Vilas, William P 103, 175, 177 
 
 Williams, Rev. Theodore C 164 
 
 Woods, Rev. Robert M 130
 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
 
 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORANDUM. 
 
 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON was born at 
 Montpelier, Vermont, February 9th, 1850, of 
 Massachusetts ancestry. He was the youngest 
 son of Daniel Pierce Thompson, well known as 
 a lawyer, judge, editor, novelist and historian ; 
 his best known literary work being " The Green 
 Mountain Boys." The Thompson family came 
 from Boston and vicinity : the great-grandfather 
 of Daniel Greenleaf Thompson having been one 
 of the martyrs of the battle of Lexington. An 
 own cousin of the last named was the distin- 
 guished Count Rumford, whose name was Ben- 
 jamin Thompson. 
 
 The subject of the present sketch prepared for 
 college in the Washington County Grammar 
 School of his native place. He graduated with 
 honors at Amherst College, Massachusetts, in 
 the class of 1869. Previous to his graduation, 
 in connection with his college duties, he served
 
 8 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 several terms as assistant Secretary of State, of 
 Vermont. In the Fall of 1869 he removed to 
 New York City, where he gave private instruc- 
 tion and studied law with George R. Thompson, 
 his brother. In April, 1870, he accepted a posi- 
 tion as teacher of classics in the Springfield, 
 Massachusetts, High School, where he remained 
 until the Summer of 1872. In July of that year 
 he published, from the press of S. C. Griggs & 
 Company, an elementary work, "A First Book 
 in Latin," which met with very favorable notice 
 all over the country. In the Autumn of 1872 
 he resumed the study of law in New York City, 
 and was admitted to the bar December 13th of 
 that year. 
 
 He has been continuously in active practice of 
 law since that date. For nearly four years he 
 was a member of the firm of Jordan, Stiles & 
 Thompson. After this, he formed a co-partner- 
 ship with Simon Sterne and Oscar S. Straus, late 
 United States Minister to Turkey, under the firm 
 name of Sterne, Straus & Thompson; continued, 
 subsequently, on the retirement of Mr. Straus, 
 under the firm name of Sterne & Thompson. 
 His present location is No. Ill Broadway, and
 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL. 9 
 
 his firm name, Taylor & Thompson, his partner 
 being Hon. John A. Taylor, formerly Corpora- 
 tion Counsel of Brooklyn. 
 
 During all periods since his graduation, he has 
 been engaged in systematic literary work. It 
 was his intention to follow up his "First Book 
 in Latin " with a series of Latin text books, but 
 his change of occupation prevented. In April, 
 1871, a paper of his on " Oratory and Vocal 
 Culture," appeared in the Massachusetts Teach- 
 er, of Boston. In the Summer of 1876, he pub- 
 lished three articles in the Liberal Christian, on 
 " Colly er and Orthodoxy," "Skepticism and 
 Criticism; " also a sequel to these in the Fitch- 
 burg- (Mass.) Sentinel, on "The True Basis of 
 Church Fellowship." 
 
 He also has been a frequent contributor to 
 Mind, a quarterly review of psychology and 
 philosophy, published in London ; to the Popu- 
 lar Science Monthly, published in New York, and 
 to various other journals and reviews. In 1884 
 he published, through the house of Longmans, 
 Green & Company, in London, "A System of 
 Psychology," in two volumes, 8vo, of 600 pages 
 each. This was followed in 1886 by "The
 
 10 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 Problem of Evil," a continuation of his psycho- 
 logical -work into the field of Ethics. 
 
 In 1888 appeared the "Religious Sentiments 
 of the Human Mind," and in 1889 another vol- 
 ume entitled "Social Progress." In 1892 was 
 published ' ' Philosophy of Fiction in Literature, ' ' 
 an essay, a volume setting forth the theory of 
 the novel, with criticisms upon the various 
 methods followed in this form of literary com- 
 position. In 1893 he published "Politics in a 
 Democracy," an essay upon present political 
 tendencies, which has since been translated into 
 Dutch, by Dr. D. C. Nijhoff. In January, 1894, 
 appeared an article in the Forum upon the ques- 
 tion of whether under increased civilization we 
 are improving or deteriorating in morals. He 
 has also delivered and published a number of 
 addresses before various societies, and on vari- 
 ous occasions, one of the last being an address 
 delivered before the "Woman's Law Class," of 
 the University of the City of New York, at the 
 closing exercises, April 4th, 1894. 
 
 Mr. Thompson never has held political office 
 in New York City, although he has been identi- 
 fied with various political movements, notably
 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL. 11 
 
 those relating to civil service, revenue and high 
 license reform. He served as a member of the 
 Committee of One Hundred at the Columbian 
 Celebration in the Fall of 1892, and has held 
 numerous honorary offices in connection with 
 public movements. He served two terms as 
 Yice-President of the New York Alumni Associa- 
 tion of Amherst College. On the death of Court- 
 landt Palmer, in 1888, he was elected to the 
 presidency of the Nineteenth Century Club, 
 which position he held for two years. He is a 
 member of the Executive Council and Secretary 
 of the Author's Club, of New York, at the pres- 
 ent time. He is also a member of the Century 
 Club, Manhattan Club, Reform Club, Bar Asso- 
 ciation, Lawyers' Club, Sons of the Revolution, 
 the Patria Club, the New England Society, and 
 a good many other associations for various pur- 
 poses. He also has been accorded the non-resi- 
 dent courtesy of the Athenseum, and two or 
 three other clubs in London. 
 
 On March 31, 1881, Mr. Thompson married 
 Henrietta Gallup, of Cleveland, Ohio, but never 
 has had children.
 
 12 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 In 1894, at the twenty-fifth anniversary of his 
 graduation, Amherst College conferred upon 
 him the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. 
 
 JAN. 1, 1895.
 
 AS AN AMHERST STUDENT.
 
 AS AN AMHERST STUDENT. 
 
 The foregoing sketch outlines in briefest 
 form the life-work of a classmate, honored and 
 beloved. As the Historian of the Class of 
 1869 at Amherst College, it has been my privi- 
 lege to incorporate this statement of facts in 
 the several editions of the class history, pub- 
 lished at our recurring anniversaries. 
 
 We have rejoiced over the career of our class- 
 mate, noting the brilliant unfolding of latent 
 powers, the rich fulfillment of the promise of 
 earlier days. His success achieved in profes- 
 sional life and as a man of letters, the honors 
 worthily bestowed upon him, have all been a 
 matter of hearty congratulation. 
 
 We now mourn deeply over a life work ended 
 in the very prime of its vigor, in the very midst 
 of brilliant achievment ; and far more than that, 
 we mourn the loss of a friend for whom we 
 learned to cherish warm affection in those years, 
 from '65 to '69. 
 
 Thompson was the youngest member of our 
 class, but none surpassed him in securing the
 
 16 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 best results from the college course. When, as 
 strangers to one another, we gathered at Am- 
 herst in the autumn of 1865, he was one of the first 
 to be pointed out as the son of Judge Thomp- 
 son, of Vermont, for we had all read and heart- 
 ily enjoyed the "Green Mountain Boys." 
 
 Fair haired, slender, with smooth, boyish 
 face, he still seemed maturer than many others, 
 and quickly made an impression upon his class- 
 mates. Though the youngest of their number, 
 he was already experienced in public affairs, 
 having become familiar with legislative proceed- 
 ings and other State business at his home in 
 Montpelier. 
 
 As a student, it was early seen that he was 
 actuated by higher motives than a mere desire 
 to attain " valedictory rank." Competitions for 
 prizes had little attraction. Mental discipline 
 and the acquisition of knowledge for future use 
 were the ends to which he directed faithful 
 efforts. No special studies received his chief at- 
 tention. Classics, mathematics, natural sciences 
 were all given their due share of time, and in all 
 these departments of study he gave evidence of 
 a wiselv balanced and well trained mind.
 
 AS AN AMHERST STUDENT. 17 
 
 But the studies of the Senior year under Pro- 
 fessor Seelye proved of special interest to him 
 and developed a bent for metaphysical subjects 
 which largely controlled his after life and made 
 it so prolific in articles for the leading Reviews, 
 and in more elaborate philosophical works. 
 
 Very early in his college career he was recog- 
 nized as an expert parliamentarian, a model 
 presiding officer, a skillful debater. When Pres- 
 ident of one of the college literary societies, he 
 would sometimes devote an evening to practice 
 in parliamentary law, and none who were pres- 
 ent will ever forget the masterly ease with 
 which he controlled the proceedings and guided 
 through all the mazes and tangles in which the 
 society would become involved. 
 
 He had a gift for organization, and was a 
 natural leader. The Amherst Student, one of the 
 pioneers in college journalism, was founded by 
 members of the Class of '69, and Thompson was 
 one of the first Board of Editors. College tra- 
 ditions had little sacredness in his eyes, and here 
 he was somewhat of an iconoclast. He cared 
 more for the right and true than for the ancient 
 and venerable; and in this, as in many other
 
 18 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 ways, the college boy was father of the man. 
 
 The Greek letter fraternities have always 
 been a prominent feature and factor in college 
 life at Amherst. Thompson here found a large 
 field for the useful exercise of his peculiar gifts, 
 and the Psi Upsilon fraternity, of which he was a 
 devoted member, has been greatly indebted to 
 him for valuable services rendered, not only dur- 
 his college course but also in subsequent years. 
 His name will always be a household word 
 in the Gamma Chapter. 
 
 He was, in every way, one of the marked men 
 of the class, and none have been surprised at 
 the distinction gained in his profession and in 
 the literary world. 
 
 Quiet, often reserved in his manner, he was 
 most genial and cordial in his friendships. And 
 it is the friend whom we mourn, and whose 
 death has brought a sense of personal bereave- 
 ment to so many. His name is the tenth to 
 receive the star on the roll of the graduate mem- 
 bers of our class. It marks the close of a fruit- 
 ful and honored life. 
 
 ^rrfic**' 'Sc^t^e^
 
 AS A PHILOSOPHER.
 
 AS A PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 626 CARLTON AVENUE, BROOKLYN, 
 October 7, 1897. 
 
 MY DEAR MRS. THOMPSON : 
 
 I thank you for the privilege of adding some- 
 thing to the public testimony to your husband's 
 qualities of mind and heart. I am sorry that I 
 did not know him to the end so well as I used to 
 know him when he lived in Brooklyn. We had 
 then a Philosophical Society, the debates of 
 which were intellectual sparring matches for the 
 most part, but I seem to remember that Mr. 
 Thompson never cared to talk for victory, nor 
 to take a side on which his opinions were not 
 actually engaged, though he could be as witty 
 and as humorous as any in the presentation of 
 his thought, and those who came up against him 
 had need to bring their sharpest steel. His wit 
 and humor were among his best endowments 
 and, though it was seldom my good fortune to 
 see him in his official station as President of the 
 Nineteenth Century Club, I can easily imagine 
 how helpful those qualities must have been
 
 22 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 to him in that responsible position, and what 
 an attraction they must have added to the 
 gatherings of the clan. I cannot forget how brill- 
 iantly they flashed and sparkled in his address 
 on Herbert Spencer before the Brooklyn Ethical 
 Association, nor how splendid was his vindica" 
 tion of Spencer's title to the leading place upon 
 the roll of those who have been foremost in the 
 advocacy of the doctrine of organic evolution. 
 We have had many great examples, a Buckle 
 and a Grote among them, of men who have pur- 
 sued elaborate studies in connection with the 
 duties of an engrossing business or profession, so 
 that I shall not make the mistake of claiming for 
 Mr. Thompson anything singular in this regard, 
 but if there was nothing singular in the habits 
 of his intellectual life, there was much that was 
 remarkable. Looking at his several books, such 
 is their character that if they had taken all his 
 time, the result would not appear inadequate. 
 It would have been different, if he had evolved 
 his philosophical camel entirely from his own 
 consciousness as the much-quoted German did his 
 definition of the beast. In fact, he took the line 
 of both the Englishman who hunted a camel up
 
 AS A PHILOSOPHER. 23 
 
 before defining him and the Frenchman who 
 read-up the camel in an exhaustive manner. 
 Nothing is more characteristic of the "Psychol- 
 ogy" or the "Religious Sentiments" than the 
 wide field of literature from which they drew 
 their illustrations. To find time to read so much 
 he must have stolen many hours, I fear, from the 
 too little guarded treasury of sleep. And be- 
 cause the literary illustrations of the "Psychol- 
 ogy" and "Religious Sentiments" were so in- 
 numerable it was not surprising that he should 
 pass from them to a purely literary subject, 
 "The Philosophy of Fiction," and show himself 
 as much at home in this particular field as if it 
 were the only one engaging his activity. The 
 discussion in that book of Realism and Idealism 
 in Fiction has always seemed to me the best dis- 
 cussion we have had of a subject which has ex- 
 ercised the ingenuity of many critics, some of 
 them "darkening counsel by words without 
 knowledge." 
 
 The literary value of Mr. Thompson's books 
 was not exhausted by the wealth of their cita- 
 tion from a multitude of authors. This was 
 secondary. The primary fact was that they had
 
 24 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 a literary value of their own in that they were 
 written in a style remarkable for its directness 
 and simplicity. What is necessary in architect- 
 ure, Emerson contended, is always beautiful. It 
 is not otherwise with the creations of the "en- 
 amored architect " of a good literary style. Mr. 
 Thompson illustrated this principle. Seeking to 
 express himself with all possible clearness he 
 acquired a style which could not have been so 
 admirable if he had been deliberately striving 
 toward fine writing as the goal of his desire. 
 
 The individualist in philosophy, the man who 
 does not speak from the chair or settee (vide 
 Holmes) of the college professor, but pursues his 
 studies independently, is very apt to waste his 
 strength in rediscovering what was long since 
 discovered, and then found to be unreal. Mr. 
 Thompson did not fall into this pit. He wrote 
 as one conscious of great allies Spencer and 
 Bain, the younger and the older Mill. His psy- 
 chological opinions were variations of their 
 themes. In general sympathy with them, he 
 was free to break with them at any time. Slav- 
 ish in his subserviency to them he never was. 
 At the same time, I think it may be said
 
 AS A PHILOSOPHER. 25 
 
 that he was somewhat provincial in his indiffer- 
 ence to German psychology, and too proudly 
 self-sufficient in his neglect of contemporary 
 studies, though we must remember that when 
 Mr. Thompson wrote his book, the psycho- 
 logical orchestra, \vhich is now making such a 
 noble music, was tuning its instruments with 
 more noise than harmony. 
 
 No sooner have I written of Mr. Thompson's 
 self-sufficiency, that I repent me of the evil I 
 have done ; for certainly it was his modesty that 
 prevented him from being what he might have 
 been if he had trusted more completely in him- 
 self. It was his modesty that obliged him often 
 to content himself with being the interpreter and 
 expositor of others; thinking, when he should 
 have been putting forth all his strength to make 
 his characteristic contribution to psychology 
 more vivid and complete. Two of his ablest 
 critics, Professors Royce and Sully the former 
 most unfriendly gave him credit for distinct 
 originality, and found him always most deserv- 
 ing our attention where he was most independ- 
 ent in his observations, and most original in his 
 conclusions. I am tempted to regret that he
 
 26 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 could not devote himself exclusively to philo- 
 sophical studies, but if he had done so, we should 
 have missed the beautiful example of a man pur- 
 suing the duties of a laborious profession, and 
 at the same time finding leisure for an avo- 
 cation which would have drained the strength 
 of many to the lees. 
 
 I know well enough, my dear Madam, how 
 imperfect these observations on your husband's 
 work will seem to you, accustomed as you were 
 to the living play of his intelligence for many 
 happy years. With ampler leisure I might have 
 written fewer and fitter words, but, if I have 
 written anything that touches your sad heart 
 with some fresh assurance of the honor and re- 
 gard in which your husband's mind and charac- 
 ter were held, I am content with that. 
 
 Sincerely yours,
 
 A FUNERAL ADDRESS.
 
 A FUNERAL ADDRESS 
 
 BY THE HON. ST. CLAIR MCKELWAY, 
 JULY 12, 1897. 
 
 MY FRIENDS: 
 
 Only a minute or two ago, Mrs. Thompson 
 asked me to say a few words here about 
 our friend, in memory and in mourning of 
 whom we are met. Such a request is, of 
 course, an obligation. Coming as it has, neither 
 preparation nor any degree of consideration 
 has been possible. But that is of less account 
 among us all than might be supposed. We 
 are all thinking the same thing about him, 
 though our thoughts concern themselves with 
 many different experiences. What we are think- 
 ing about him is that in him we each had a 
 dear and helpful friend, and that we have him 
 no more. The testimonies of our hearts and 
 memories might recall very different events or 
 occasions; but the fact of service and of sym- 
 pathy would run through every one of them. 
 The sense of loss and of sorrow is the same. If 
 we just sat herein silence, our thoughts would
 
 30 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 run together, and the words -which express 
 those thoughts need no elaboration. 
 
 We also know, all of us who truly knew him, 
 that he would have what is said or done about 
 him be as simple and sincere as he was himself. 
 Realities were much to him. Appearances were 
 not. Substance, not show, interested his mind. 
 He went out of life in a moment, in a way which 
 might be called dramatic, if looked at from one 
 point of view. But he would not have any 
 words about him or any observance wear that 
 character. He would have his life rather than 
 his death give the note to words concerning 
 him. He liked to be among friends. Amongfriends 
 he felt at home. He is surrounded by friends here. 
 He would have no more display on account 
 of himself, dead, than he would on account of 
 himself, living. The simplicity, informality and 
 genuineness of the man were qualities which 
 befit his funeral. We all know and feel that 
 they do. 
 
 With him, before all things was truth. He 
 seemed what he was. He said his thought. 
 When his thought changed, he moved his life 
 and words with it. This was, in part, because
 
 A FUNERAL ADDRESS. 31 
 
 he came from the aristocracy of American 
 thought the true, pure and solid stock of New 
 England. Revolutionary blood was in him, and 
 colonial blood before that the stock of men 
 who thought and wrought and grew right 
 straight on. A jurist and an author, he was 
 the son of an author and a jurist, and he ad- 
 vanced from law into literature and from litera- 
 ture into philosophy. He followed the expe- 
 rience of the New England home with the drill 
 and culture of the New England College. He 
 followed that by attendance on the school of 
 life in this metropolis. Here he came unto 
 strangers, and here for more than twenty years 
 he lived among friends. He had the friend-mak- 
 ing qualities. He made his friends the friends of 
 one another. He advanced from legal service to 
 legal command. He was a persuasive advocate. 
 He was a wise adviser. He was a careful stu- 
 dent. He settled more interests and contentions 
 than he disputed, and he liked to settle them 
 more than to quarrel about them. He was the 
 soul of honor as a practitioner. His word 
 was the only stipulation needed. His rank 
 at the bar was high. It was won and held
 
 32 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 by professional and personal character in the 
 best sense of that word. 
 
 His position in literature was distinguished, 
 and it was becoming eminent. He chose philos- 
 ophy as his specialty. It enabled him, as an 
 historian, to account for the past, as an ob- 
 server, to understand the present, and as a 
 thinker, to take outlook on the future. He never 
 wrote a word of hardness or uncharitableness. 
 His recognition among the thoughtful and the 
 scholarly was assured. The judgment of foreign- 
 ers, in a sense, is the judgment of posterity. For- 
 eign judgment of him was very favorable. Esti- 
 mate of him at home, as an author, steadily grew. 
 His subjects were too broad and general, his 
 treatment of them was too profound, for popu- 
 larity ; but scientists, artists, scholars, teachers 
 and statesmen were his readers. His corre- 
 spondents and his friends and his works received 
 not only praise but translation abroad. He 
 pursued law and literature on parallel lines, and 
 philosophy was the lamp that guided his feet on 
 the road. 
 
 But we all of us liked him better for what he 
 was, did and said to us, than for anything he
 
 A FUNERAL ADDRESS. 33 
 
 was, did or said to the world. To us, the man 
 and the friend was more than the jurist, author, 
 orator or philosopher. He largely lived for 
 others. His life was altruistic always, though 
 never avowedly so. He made no claims, just 
 as he made no pretensions. As time goes on, 
 we may be able to tell the debt which law or 
 authorship owes to him, but friendship is his 
 mourner to-day and the rest can wait. We 
 would withhold no word of sympathy from 
 those especially stricken by his going out. 
 They know they have our sympathy and that 
 they will need it in the days to come. But 
 they and we can bear away from this scene the 
 compensation of his memory, the privilege of his 
 fellowship, and the purpose to do unto others 
 in our measure the things which he did unto us 
 and for us in his fullness of measure in the time 
 that he and we were together, in work, in pur- 
 pose, and in service here.
 
 AS A LAWYER.
 
 AS A LAWYER. 
 
 Daniel Greenleaf Thompson was junior part- 
 ner in the firm of Sterne & Thompson when I, as 
 a student in that office, first knew him. From the 
 very beginning of my professional life I have thus 
 had an opportunity of observing his considerate 
 and kindly dealings with his associates. His 
 broad views and cheerful disposition manifested 
 themselves constantly in his judgment of men 
 and their motives, and endeared him to every one 
 with whom he came in contact. Subsequently I 
 entered into partnership with him in the practice 
 of law, and for ten years enjoyed the privilege of 
 a daily association with him. During all this 
 period, in the strain and contention of an active 
 practice, Mr. Thompson was ever the same even- 
 tempered judicial minded man, kindly, sympa- 
 thetic and dispassionate with an intellectual 
 grasp which mastered all difficulties. He aroused 
 no bitter antagonisms and made no enemies, and 
 this was attributable not to any lack offeree or 
 decided convictions upon his part, but to his rare 
 faculty of drawing out of all men the best that
 
 38 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 was in them. His life seemed modeled on the 
 well-known lines of James Russell Lowell : 
 
 " Be noble ! and the nobleness that lies 
 In other men, sleeping but never dead, 
 Will rise in majesty to meet thine own." 
 
 His opponents always contended with him 
 upon a high and honorable plane. As a practi- 
 tioner, while neglecting nothing of his clients' 
 interests, he never relied upon the technicalities 
 of involved procedure, but sought to litigate 
 honorably and fairly, and to impress upon his 
 adversary and the Court the sincerity of his con- 
 victions and the justice of his cause. His breth- 
 ren at the bar learned to depend not merely on 
 the letter but upon the spirit of his promise. He 
 preferred an argument before an appellate tribu- 
 nal upon some intricate legal problem to the 
 forensic display of a jury trial. His hearers were 
 invariably impressed with his deep research and 
 the conscientiousness which left no phase of a 
 subject untouched, no aspect of a case unillu- 
 mined. His broad intellectual horizon and pro- 
 found knowledge of substantive law should have
 
 AS A LAWYER. 39 
 
 earned for him an elevation to the bench. He 
 was eminently fitted for a judicial position, and 
 lawyers as well as litigants would speedily have 
 learned to seek and depend upon his keen sense 
 of justice and to prize his careful and well con- 
 sidered opinions. 
 
 Mr. Thompson's professional career began in 
 the year 1872, when he became a student in the 
 office of Foster & Thomson, and was admitted 
 to the bar. In 1873, with Edward Jordan and 
 Theodore L. Stiles, he organized the firm of Jor- 
 dan, Stiles & Thompson, and upon the dissolu- 
 tion of that firm in 1878, he joined the office of 
 Sterne, Hudson & Straus, and was very shortly 
 afterward admitted to the firm, which then 
 became Sterne, Straus & Thompson, his part- 
 ners being Simon Sterne and Hon. Oscar S. 
 Straus. In 1881, upon the retirement of Mr. 
 Straus, the firm name became Sterne & Thomp. 
 son. In 1885 the firm of Thompson, Ackley & 
 Kaufman was formed and continued until 1890, 
 when Mr. Thompson entered into copartnership 
 with Charles E. Lydecker under the firm name of 
 Thompson & Lydecker. In 1892 Mr, Thompson
 
 40 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 joined Mr. John A. Taylor and myself in form- 
 ing the firm of Taylor, Thompson & Kaufman. 
 I retired from the firm in 1894, \vhich then 
 continued under the name of Taylor & Thomp- 
 son up to the time of his death. During this 
 period of twenty-five years of active practice 
 Mr. Thompson was engaged in many important 
 litigations and in the varied controversies of a 
 general law practice. To this work he brought 
 a careful and well-trained mind, conscientiously 
 devoted to his clients' interests and studiously 
 safeguarding them. 
 
 His characteristic dignity and kindliness, 
 united with a rare fund of humor and graceful 
 diction, made of him a very attractive public 
 speaker, and his thorough mastery of his subject 
 always secured for him the interested attention 
 and thoughtful consideration of the judges before 
 whom he appeared. His professional forte lay 
 in a fair and forceful presentation of the facts and 
 an appeal to the reason of the Courts by logical 
 and comprehensive argument. His success as a 
 lawyer lay in his ability to survey the whole field 
 of jurisprudence with a mind well poised, and 
 a keen discrimination aptly appreciating the
 
 AS A LAWYER. 41 
 
 weight of well determined precedents and de- 
 cisively defining the trend of judicial opinion 
 bearing upon the case in hand. 
 
 His brethren at the bar will cherish the mem- 
 ory of his helpful counsel, often sought and never 
 denied them. His colleagues, who esteemed him, 
 and his friends, who loved him, keenly regret the 
 early closing of his brilliant career. 
 
 U^MHW^ 
 
 I
 
 AN AUTHOR AND FRIEND.
 
 AN AUTHOR AND FRIEND. 
 
 It so happened that during the years in 
 which Mr. Thompson's office was within a 
 block's distance from my own I never really 
 knew him until he joined the Authors' Club in 
 1888. Notwithstanding his extreme modesty, 
 he was not one to be there long without gain- 
 ing prominence. His mental power, executive 
 ability, and, above all, his delightful personal 
 qualities, quickly made him one of the most effi- 
 cient and best loved members. It was by natural 
 selection that he became in time our secret ary. 
 
 The Club brought me nothing better than my 
 association and friendship with Daniel Greenleaf 
 Thompson. Besides our committee work to- 
 gether, we had frequent meetings and confi- 
 dences at the Authors' and the Century. As an 
 official, he was not only scrupulous and happy 
 in his attention to duty, but he soon became a 
 kind of universal solvent whenever the tradi- 
 tionally sensitive elements of a literary fusion 
 were intractable. His tact, consideration, good 
 sense, kindly influence, never failed to do their 
 perfect work. Equally strong and sympathetic,
 
 46 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 he was a man to cling to, and one whose service 
 could not be fully estimated "save by his loss." 
 Thompson's philosophical writings are a 
 monument to his powers of thought ; but it is of 
 his sweetness, serenity, and companionship 
 that I am now thinking and writing. When he 
 died, so unexpectedly, I am sure that tears came 
 to the eyes of many whose acquaintance with 
 him was even less intimate than mine. In the 
 lone midsummer I attended the simple funeral 
 services in town, and it seemed only natural to 
 find that others of his comrades had journeyed 
 fast and far to pay a silent tribute of affection 
 and regret.
 
 THE TEACHER OF ETHICS.
 
 THE TEACHER OF ETHICS. 
 
 As all roads lead to Rome, so all philosophies 
 in the nineteenth century lead to ethics; they 
 are judged by their moral teaching and influence 
 on human lives. All teachers, whether they will 
 or no, are teachers of ethics. Many are the 
 types of ethical theory, but the modern evolu- 
 tionist has the consolation of perceiving that 
 moral advancement does not depend primarily 
 on the character of one's ethical system; the 
 ultimate sanctions for right action lie in the 
 nature of things, and are enforced by the practi- 
 cal lessons of experience. Ethical relations be- 
 tween individuals are established, in the main, 
 by the conditions under which they dwell to- 
 gether in association. 
 
 This process of moral evolution, however, 
 may be greatly aided or retarded by the atti- 
 tude of the mind toward the problem of life 
 itself. It is therefore true that ethical theories 
 may help or hinder, through their influence 
 on individual lives, the moral advancement 
 of the race. To the evolutionist the end and 
 aim of Nature is fullness of life, whether in
 
 50 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 the field of biology or in the higher realms 
 of sociology, ethics and individual experience. 
 The philosophical evolutionist is therefore logi- 
 cally an optimist, or at least a meliorist, in 
 his attitude toward the problem of life. He 
 must believe that life is inherently good, and 
 not evil. 
 
 Daniel Greenleaf Thompson was a philosophi- 
 cal evolutionist. It was his rare fortune to come 
 upon the stage of intellectual activity after the 
 doctrine of evolution had been firmly estab- 
 lished as a scientific fact, and to have for com- 
 panions and friends in his intellectual work 
 some of the ablest exponents of the doctrine. 
 Interested from his youth in the higher prob- 
 lems of thought, he had formulated before his 
 graduation from college, as he tells us in the 
 interesting preface to his essay on Social Prog- 
 ress, a plan of life, and an outline of work, to 
 which he consistently applied himself during the 
 intervals of a busy, professional life in later 
 years. To the wealth of material presented by 
 the great masters of scientific lore, he brought 
 a mature and independent judgment, a riper 
 scholarship in the field of classical literature
 
 THE TEACHER OF ETHICS. 51 
 
 than is usually found in those whose bent is 
 rather toward the conclusions of science than 
 the conventional opinions inculcated by the uni- 
 versity curriculum of a quarter of a century 
 ago, and a clear and elegant diction which lent 
 added grace and interest to the statement of his 
 conclusions. 
 
 With such native gifts, and in such an intel- 
 lectual environment, it is hardly necessary to say 
 that Mr. Thompson's conception of the essential 
 nature of life, here on this earth, was optimistic. 
 Since philosophy is largely a matter of tempera- 
 ment, he would probably have been an opti- 
 mist, even had he not been in touch with Spencer 
 and Darwin and Youmans and Fiske, and the 
 great masters of evolutionary thought. Among 
 the philosophers of classical antiquity he sym- 
 pathized most profoundly with the teachings of 
 Epicurus. He was the able interpreter of the 
 thought of that great master to our generation. 
 He defended it against the misapprehensions 
 and misinterpretations of unsympathetic criti- 
 cism, both of his own and later times. He res- 
 pected the reverence for life which underlies and 
 inspires the teachings of Epicurus. With him,
 
 52 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 he rejected the morbid asceticism which would 
 seek for the highest good in the mortification 
 of the flesh and the atrophy of the normal 
 functions and activities of man, instead of mak- 
 ing them by wise direction and cultivation the 
 servants and ministers to the noblest ethical 
 and spiritual life. 
 
 In the systematic presentation of his thought, 
 ethics was outlined by Mr. Thompson as a 
 branch of psychology ; but psychology, in the 
 broad view which he took of it, was co-terminus 
 with anthropology, covering the entire range of 
 human activities. Ethics, therefore, with him as 
 with Mr. Spencer, was the goal of Nature's long 
 evolutionary process the end toward which all 
 the operations of life are tending. Since Nature 
 has made pleasure or happiness the concomitant 
 of the free exercise, in due adjustment and pro- 
 portion, of every natural faculty, the strong 
 incentive to woo man out of animalism into 
 manhood, out of savagery toward civilization, 
 he saw no escape from the conclusion that this 
 result is entirely normal and justifiable a part 
 of the divine plan. Mr. Thompson's ethical 
 philosophy, therefore, was frankly hedonistic.
 
 THE TEACHER OF ETHICS. 53 
 
 He did not try to explain away or apologize for 
 this attitude. With Spencer, however, he clearly 
 understood and affirmed that the highest indi- 
 vidual happiness is unattainable while egoistic 
 and altruistic ends are regarded as antithetic 
 and antagonistic. The greatest happiness of 
 each must be sought and found in the greatest 
 happiness of the greatest number ultimately 
 in the highest satisfaction of all. "The nearer 
 any individual can come to making the ethical 
 summum bonum his supreme end, the more 
 fully will he satisfy the requirements of this 
 social obligation." In the final synthesis, ego- 
 ism and altruism are unified; that line of 
 action which conduces to the highest welfare 
 of each is precisely the line of action which 
 secures equity, the largest liberty and the 
 greatest happiness of all. 
 
 Finding the sanctions of morality and the 
 basis of his ethical system in the natural order of 
 the universe and the normal relations of man to 
 man, Mr. Thompson ably and resolutely corn- 
 batted the theological conception of sin. Moral 
 evil, he held, is that and that only which results 
 from the violation of the moral law the ignorant
 
 54? DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 or willful departure from these normal relations. 
 The ethical code is not written in books, or given 
 to man by supernatural inspiration it inheres 
 in the nature of things, and is discoverable 
 through human experience and the normal exer- 
 cise of faculties common to all men. Its penal- 
 ties are not extrinsic, but intrinsic. The moral 
 law does not depend upon the arbitrary man- 
 dates of deity, any more than does the law of 
 gravity. Both are equally divine; both are 
 equally natural. The doctrine of human lapse 
 and depravity is, therefore, not only untrue, but 
 essentially immoral. It connotes and implies a 
 confusion of ideas concerning the nature of right 
 and wrong that strikes at the very foundations 
 of the ethical life. I know not where in our lit- 
 erature this subject has been so ably and forcibly 
 handled, as in the section entitled "The Great 
 Theological Superstition," in The Problem of 
 Evil 
 
 To Daniel Greenleaf Thompson, philosophy 
 was no mere fine-spun theory about life, a dilet- 
 tante speculation for idle moments ; it was some- 
 thing to be practically applied in the constantly 
 arising emergencies of daily living. The logical
 
 THE TEACHER OF ETHICS. 55 
 
 outcome of hedonistic utilitarianism in political 
 philosophy is democratic individualism. Mr. 
 Thompson was a consistent individualist in pol- 
 itics. This by no means implies that he was 
 blind to the social obligations of the individual, 
 or to the influence of social conditions in forming 
 individual character. "No man is great in iso- 
 lation," he truly affirms. As his theory of the 
 summum bonum implied the happiness of all as 
 a condition to the highest happiness of each, so 
 his political philosophy implied the recognition 
 of the rights of all as a condition for securing 
 the rights of each. 
 
 This conception of right he would apply in 
 the family as well as in the State. It implied, 
 in his judgment, the abolition of patriarchal au- 
 tocracy in family government, the recognition 
 of the equal rights of the wife with the husband, 
 and respect for the individualities of children. 
 " Children are to be worked for as human beings 
 having their own independent ends, which are 
 to be respected. They are not to be considered 
 as mere dependents, owing allegiance to their 
 parents, and subordinate in all their activity to 
 the purposes and pleasures of the parents ; but
 
 56 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 their welfare, read in the light of their own self- 
 determinations, assumes a just importance, and 
 is of equal consequence to the weal of father or 
 mother." For father or mother to "play the 
 sovereign "in a family is, in his judgment, an 
 immoral act. 
 
 Though he never shirked the logical outcome 
 of his principles, Mr. Thompson was no mere 
 sentimental agitator for extreme opinions. His 
 views on social and political topics were care- 
 fully considered, and were legitimate deductions 
 from his general philosophy of life. He had no 
 hesitation in confessing the judgments thus ma- 
 turely formed, though conservative in his esti- 
 mation of the probability of their complete ac- 
 ceptance and realization in the ordering of social 
 institutions. From the great American sin of 
 subservience to public opinion he was entirely 
 free. He was entirely frank, therefore, in his de- 
 fence of the equality of woman with man. In 
 discussing "Woman's New Opportunity" before 
 the Woman's Law Class of the University of 
 the City of New York, he said: "The doctrine 
 that woman's activity should be limited by 
 law, or by custom, or by public opinion, in any
 
 THE TEACHER OF ETHICS. 57 
 
 way different from that of man, is born of ignor- 
 ance and wickedness. It is an offspring of that 
 sentiment of aggression and domination which 
 has made the serf, the slave, and the feudatory. 
 It is a refusal of justice. It is a denial of person- 
 ality. It is an assertion that woman is not a 
 human being. It is a contradiction of every 
 foundation principle of ethics, politics and social 
 science. It is a logical absurdity. It is a moral 
 enormity. It is a libel upon nature. It is a 
 blasphemy against the Author of Nature." 
 
 Hail, and farewell, brave soul! A life how 
 short, and yet how full, consecrated how con- 
 sistently to the ideals wrought out of the 
 thoughtful experience of a sincere mind, face to 
 face with the facts of the universe. Few there 
 are among us who face the grave problems of 
 life with such clear vision and in such candid 
 spirit. Thou hast left the world a precious 
 legacy of honest thought. Thou hast nobly pro- 
 tested against the prevailing pessimism in phi- 
 losophy and fiction. Courage and good cheer 
 are the burden of thy message to those who live 
 after thee. Nor yet didst thou lose in the mazes 
 of philosophical speculation thy grasp on the
 
 58 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 immortal hope. In the excellence of the life that 
 now is, thou sawest a prophecy of personal con- 
 tinuance in the life hereafter. Best legacy of all, 
 most profoundly ethical, most deeply needed, is 
 the noble example of free, untrammeled thought 
 wedded to frank speech, which thou hast left us. 
 Reading anew thy noble volumes, to us who 
 knew thee the thoughts seem vascular back of 
 them we feel the life of an earnest and sincere 
 person. Such thoughts do not die: they live, 
 and through responsive minds they move the 
 world to higher issues. 

 
 ETHICAL ASSOCIATION EULOGY.
 
 ETHICAL ASSOCIATION ADDRESS 
 
 BY THE HON. JOHN A. TAYLOR, 
 SEPTEMBER 26, 1897. 
 
 Death is the crowning mystery of life. Its 
 boding shadow takes its place at the cradle and 
 keeps its attendance constant to the grave. 
 And yet we are never ready for its actual sum- 
 mons. Neither time nor place seem ever fitting 
 for its unwelcome intrusion. 
 
 When, during July last, the message came to 
 me that Daniel Greenleaf Thompson was dead, 
 my first thought was, How short his life has 
 been ! How fate is cheated of its promise ! I did 
 not for the moment half appreciate the death 
 of sweet companionship, of useful counsel, of 
 lofty contemplation, which it implied. I did not 
 have in mind the estimate that men must place 
 upon his short career ; the potential power and 
 influence which were hidden in his twenty years 
 of incompleted life ; the swift arrest of many pro- 
 jects ; the sudden snap of virile chords of friend- 
 ship and tender ties of love and admiration.
 
 62 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 And yet it is not an unmixed grief that he 
 should have died in the plenitude of life, when his 
 mental vision was unimpaired, when the quiver 
 of hope was inexhausted, when his friends could 
 point with confident expectation to the worth 
 and usefulness of what was left undone. Surely 
 he had long entitled himself to be regarded as an 
 intellectual giant. He was the friend and com- 
 peer of men of colossal thought and ripest cul- 
 tivation. He was constituted, by the appear- 
 ance of his "Psychology" in 1884, among the 
 foremost thinkers in that abstruse science. For 
 years he was the leading American psychologist, 
 and he demonstrated, by repeated publications, 
 that he never permitted the duties of an arduous 
 and jealous profession to wholly close to him 
 the gates of those delightful paths of literature 
 and public utterance which he did so much to 
 enrich and adorn. 
 
 He was of New England origin directly, and 
 more remotely of old England. He gained large 
 insight into the secret springs of human nature 
 by his service when very young as Assistant 
 Secretary of the State of Vermont. He spent 
 his four years of college life at Amherst, in a
 
 ETHICAL ASSOCIATION EULOGY. 63 
 
 vigilant and successful pursuit and acquisition 
 of knowledge, and the love of learning kept him 
 as a teacher for a time before his entrance on his 
 serious -work of life. 
 
 This was destined to be of a twofold nature. 
 He was admitted to the New York bar in 1872, 
 and won early recognition at the hands of his 
 brethren of the profession and of the bench, and 
 during his career of a full quarter of a century, 
 as a prosecuting lawyer, he won extensive repu- 
 tation by the publication of a series of volumes 
 on philosophical subjects and an occasional 
 excursion into the lighter realms of literature. 
 At any time of the latter part of his practice he 
 would have been regarded by his legal brethren 
 as eminently fitted for a judicial career. 
 
 But he has passed at last beyond all heed of 
 human judgment. To those of us who knew 
 and loved him is left the valued satisfaction of 
 summing up his rich and fruitful life. Surely he 
 belonged to the aristocracy of intellect. By 
 mental equipment, by character, by tireless 
 industry, he had achieved those things in life 
 which lifted him far above the paths of common 
 men, and won for him the priceless recognition
 
 64 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 of renown. In whatever circle he moved, he 
 illuminated it by the brilliancy of his humor 
 and the profundity of his knowledge. To few of 
 his contemporaries was it given to fringe the 
 solid qualities of wisdom with so sparkling a 
 vein of sprightly fancy. He dearly loved what 
 may be called the humanities of life, and thor- 
 oughly despised all human meanness. He 
 caught the temper of his time with admirable 
 completeness, and assailed its weaknesses with 
 unsparing scorn and sarcasm. He was highly 
 valued and always successful as an occasional 
 orator. His ideas were always presented com- 
 pletely. They were never half formed. He 
 clothed them, too, in such attractive forms 
 of expression as earned for them the pleased 
 attention of his hearers . He was a man of great 
 intellectual integrity. Scrupulously loyal to 
 every form of obligation, he sought as his only 
 end the truth. This led him, long before the 
 present wide acceptance of Spencerian principles, 
 to promptly appreciate and advocate the funda- 
 mental doctrines of evolution. 
 
 He believed in the freest scope for all human 
 expression, hence he was among the earliest
 
 ETHICAL ASSOCIATION EULOGY. 65 
 
 members of the Nineteenth Century Club, and 
 succeeded its founder, Courtland Palmer, as its 
 president. He keenly relished and warmly ap- 
 preciated the broad platform of that society, 
 which invited to its opportunities all classes of 
 public men and women, without regard to race, 
 belief, or class. As president of the organiza- 
 tion he dignified the office and helped to elevate 
 the tone of all its functions and make it more 
 and more a forceful element of progress in the 
 metropolis. 
 
 He was fearless in his advocacy of unpopular 
 truth. He brought to his book on "Politics in 
 a Democracy" the keenest power of analysis, 
 which power was one of his strongest elements 
 as a writer, and he did not scruple to enunciate 
 his conclusions, although the intellectual path 
 he followed led him far away from many men 
 for whose opinion he entertained profound 
 respect. 
 
 He was, more than most men, tolerant of op- 
 posing theories and views. He gave to all the 
 freest hearing, reserving to himself the right to 
 formulate his own creed and prescribe his own 
 rule of action.
 
 66 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 And he was always to be relied upon. He 
 deserved and he received the highest confidences 
 of men and women, and these he never betrayed. 
 No stress of situation could ever lead him to 
 forget the rights of others entrusted to his keep- 
 ing. He understood thoroughly the art of help- 
 ing others, 'and his friendship once won was 
 never afterward witheld. He never forgot the 
 beginnings of wisdom, nor despised the small 
 achievements of those who were his inferiors. 
 He opened his mind and heart with willing pa- 
 tience to the story of human suffering, and never 
 closed the door of his attention till he had meas- 
 ured with judicial fairness the actual need, and 
 portioned out to it its just amount of relief. 
 
 Who that has ever basked in the radiant sun- 
 shine of his social contact can long forget the 
 richly welling spring of anecdote and fun which 
 made his presence so sure a prophecy of glad 
 and edifying conversation. I think his gift of 
 humor was of uncommon excellence, but never 
 did he bait the shaft of his epigram with the 
 bitterness of scorn. 
 
 Accustomed as we all are to note the quick 
 oblivion that follows close upon the mortal
 
 ETHICAL ASSOCIATION EULOGY. 67 
 
 extinction of the most exalted human career, it 
 cannot be without a bitter sense of the remorse- 
 lessness of death that we surrender the too 
 short earthly record of our friend to the oblivion 
 of the past. We shall long indeed recall his 
 noble form, his genial nature, his open counte- 
 nance illuminated with the shining brilliancy of 
 a highly cultivated mind. And the world at 
 large will miss from out the paths of culture 
 and refinement a strong and fertile nature, 
 richly endowed with intellectual and philo- 
 sophic gifts.
 
 AS A MAN OF LETTERS.
 
 AS A MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 Daniel Greenleaf Thompson inherited the 
 right to be an author, for he was a son of the 
 Judge Thompson -whose "Green Mountain 
 Boys" has long been a classic of American youth. 
 I have the impression that the son did not greatly 
 care for this lively yarn of his father's, and per- 
 haps he may even have underestimated the value 
 of this unpretending historical novel, which 
 (whatever may be its defects, and however ob- 
 vious they are) has proved itself to possess, at 
 least, one inestimable characteristic vitality. 
 
 The son was a lawyer, like the father, but 
 where the elder Thompson took to fiction as a 
 relaxation, the younger found his relief in phi- 
 losophy. The most of his literary work was 
 done in a department of human endeavor in 
 which the present writer is well aware that he 
 has no qualification to act as a critic. Twice, 
 however, Thompson brought his mind to bear 
 on problems wherein the interest was not chiefly 
 philosophical. In these two books he grappled 
 resolutely with subjects quite within the range 
 of the average educated man. The first of
 
 72 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 these two volumes was "The Philosophy of Fic- 
 tion in Literature. An Essay," published by 
 Longmans, Green & Co., in the fall of 1890. The 
 second was "Politics in a Democracy. An Es- 
 say," issued by the same firm, in 1893. 
 
 Although the themes that he thus chose to 
 consider were, one of them literary and the other 
 political, his manner in treating them was phil- 
 osophical. In changing his subject, he did not 
 change his method. He had the philosophical 
 desire to go always to the root of the matter 
 and to seek out first principles. He wanted to 
 get down to bed-rock and to find out the foun- 
 dations of current belief, both in civics and in 
 esthetics. He wished to discover whether these 
 foundations were solid and four-square to all 
 the winds that blow. He was not content to 
 accept tradition without investigation. He 
 needed to assure himself that what he said 
 would stand the test of his own disinterested 
 examination. He insisted on doing his own 
 thinking. As a writer, he had the courage of 
 his convictions; and he never swerved aside 
 in fear of the goal to which his own logic was 
 carryinglihim.
 
 AS A MAN OF LETTERS. 73 
 
 He was as independent in his criticism of 
 contemporary fiction as he was in his criti- 
 cism of contemporary politics. Interesting and 
 suggestive as was "Politics in a Democracy," it 
 was not more interesting or more suggestive 
 than the "Philosophy of Fiction in Literature." 
 And what gave value to the one gave validity 
 also to the other : the intellectual independence 
 of the man. If his political speculation led him to 
 the conclusion that in a modern democracy the 
 Boss is inevitable, he said so frankly and gave 
 his reasons for the faith that was in him. If his 
 literary speculation led him to the conclusion 
 that from certain aspects the Waverly novels 
 were doubtfully moral, he was not afraid to say 
 what he thought and to explain clearly why he 
 thought so. He declared boldly that Scott was 
 "the most successful of any writer in making 
 homicide charming and in elevating things to the 
 rank of demigods." He asserted as boldly that 
 Scott's heroes, "from Richard Cceur de Lion 
 through the list, are chiefly brutal ruffians, over 
 whom the false splendor of the ideals of chivalry 
 has cast a glamor" ("Philosophy of Fiction," 
 p. 164).
 
 74 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 These statements are wholesome and needful, 
 and stimulating. But Thompson was too care- 
 ful a thinker and too cautious a philosopher 
 not to try and answer the obvious question, 
 Why it is the Scott novels are felt to do more 
 good than harm on the whole? At bottom 
 Thompson's defence of the "Waverly Novels" 
 was of the same paradoxical character that 
 Macaulay found in Lamb's defence of the 
 Restoration comedies. It amounts to little 
 more than a statement of "the remoteness of 
 the danger of anyone being corrupted by 
 Scott's representations of character." It is to 
 be noted that so shrewd an observer as Mr. S. L. 
 Clemens is of opinion that these very character- 
 istics of the "Waverly Novels," the bloodshed, 
 the sham chivalry, the bunco-heroism abund- 
 ant in most of them had worked immeasur- 
 able harm in the society of our Southern States. 
 
 But that Thompson should have ventured 
 to suggest an opinion so opposed to that held 
 sacredly by most of those who have written 
 in our language about the masters of fiction, 
 and should have raised the question of the real 
 and abiding ethical effect of Scott's romanticist
 
 AS A MAN OF LETTERS. 75 
 
 fictions, this shows his independence of judg- 
 ment. It shows that Thompson possessed what 
 is actually the prime qualification of the man of 
 letters he had something to say. His opinions 
 were his own, the result of his own logical pro- 
 cesses. Whether they might happen to be ortho- 
 dox or heterodox, was of no concern to liim. 
 He had no objection to row against the current 
 of received beliefs, and he had also no unwilling- 
 ness to float with it, if the stream was flowing 
 toward the point he wished to reach. He was 
 never guilty of the cheap and easy affectation of 
 going counter to public opinion, merely to make 
 himself conspicuous. Often he had to brace him- 
 self to oppose the momentum of the majority ; 
 but he never did this wantonly, freakishly, from 
 mere lust of singularity. He was altogether 
 above any inexpensive hypocrisy of this sort. 
 Indeed, his sincerity was quite equal to his inde- 
 pendence. Sometimes, so it has seemed to me, 
 he may have relished the isolation of a philo- 
 sophical outpost; but he had thrust himself 
 forward to the skirmish line, not as a guerrilla, 
 but as a pioneer, helping to clear the way for 
 the advance of the main body.
 
 76 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 His books are well made and well written. 
 They have a carefully articulated skeleton, not 
 paraded fatiguingly, rather concealed (as a de- 
 cent skeleton should be), and yet sustaining the 
 work and giving it strength. They are clear in 
 diction, simple and direct, easy to read and easy 
 to understand. Thompson strove for no tor- 
 tured felicity of epithet, no strenuous colloca- 
 tion of unexpected adjectives. His style was 
 an instrument always adequate to the expres- 
 sion of his thoughts ; and it was always to the 
 adequate expression of his thought that he gave 
 his chief attention when he was engaged in com- 
 position. His books, and by his books here I 
 mean the two volumes I have been considering, 
 the essay on the "Philosophy of Fiction" and 
 that on "Politics in a Democracy" are, there- 
 fore, to be classed with the works which are of 
 value for what they tell us, and not with the 
 works which are of value merely for the manner 
 of the telling. 
 
 Columbia University, New York.
 
 AS KNOWN TO A FRIEND.
 
 AS KNOWN TO A FRIEND. 
 
 In the autumn of 1885, traveling with some 
 members of my family, I took the train at Lau- 
 sanne for Villeneuve, on Lake Geneva. We 
 found a gentleman already in the compartment 
 he was the only occupant besides ourselves. 
 It was growing dark, and he sat near the lamp 
 reading a newspaper. Presumably he could 
 not understand English, and we continued our 
 conversation as though we were alone. After 
 a while the little girl of our party grew weary 
 and peevish. We had come all the way from 
 Berne that afternoon. She was taken on the 
 lap of an aunt and amused with the old, unfail- 
 ing jingles of our English Mother Goose and 
 those baby tales that have soothed generations 
 of children from the glacial epoch to this time, 
 for aught anybody knows. When the story- 
 teller reached the "cunny-bunny blackberry," 
 the gentleman opposite, who had not shown 
 any sign of understanding English, laid down 
 his paper it proved to be the London Times 
 and laughed with the gentle laughter of a man
 
 80 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 who feels the sweet memories of his childhood 
 stealing over him in a strange land. 
 
 "It is long since I heard that story," he said, 
 apologetically, and with an accent that was 
 not that of an habitual reader of the London 
 Times. In a minute we had fraternized with a 
 countryman, as lonesome Americans abroad 
 are wont to fraternize. He and we knew the 
 same people, and knew about one another. By 
 the time Mr. Thompson alighted at Montreux, 
 where he and Mrs. Thompson were sojourning, 
 we were well acquainted, and, as ours was the 
 next station, we had many chances to meet in 
 the weeks that followed. Nothing could have 
 been more pleasant to me than walking the 
 mountain paths, among the vineyards about 
 Montreux, with one whose knowledge was so 
 extensive, whose mind was active on so many 
 sides, and whose manners were so genial/ 
 
 It was about two years later that I went to 
 live in the Chelsea apartment house, in New 
 York, and found, to my delight, that the neigh- 
 bor almost overhead was my friend of the long 
 walks among the Swiss vineyards. For years 
 we lived in neighborhood, and the chance
 
 AS KNOWN TO A FRIEND. 81 
 
 acquaintance at Lausanne became a firm friend, 
 dispensing sympathy, when I was in sorrow, 
 and giving good counsel when I was in situa- 
 tions of perplexity. How well I remember his 
 kindness ! When I was in vexatious and trying 
 circumstances, and dwelling, for weeks, alone 
 in my rooms, he would come, frequently, and 
 persuade me to a cheerful evening in his apart- 
 ment. 
 
 I used to wonder at the range of his reading. 
 The last essay in philosophy he would know 
 thoroughly, but he knew just as well the 
 mighty stream of novels, down even to the 
 rubbish, and, if the talk turned to national or 
 municipal politics, no man could show more 
 intelligent information than he did. His mind 
 eagerly absorbed from all sources he read the 
 papers, he seemed to know everything impor- 
 tant in the magazines, and he extracted what- 
 ever his friends knew. And what a range of 
 friends he had! A member of innumerable 
 clubs, the guest at many dinner tables, active 
 in business and politics, he met all sorts of peo- 
 ple, and had an amount of information on all 
 kinds of subjects, great and small, that I have
 
 82 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 hardly ever seen equaled. I once heard a lady 
 describe him as a most knowing man. 
 
 His mental energy seems to me, as I recall it, 
 almost incredible. Besides his law practice and 
 his private business, and his complicated social 
 life, and his vast reading, he found time to be, 
 as I have been told, distinguished for his Latin 
 scholarship ; he wrote volumes on metaphysical 
 subjects that attracted the attention of think- 
 ers, and other valuable books on literary and 
 political themes; he was for some years the 
 active president of the Nineteenth Century 
 Club, and for other years the most laborious 
 and energetic secretary of the Authors Club. 
 He served on committees, taking the labor- 
 ing oar, and withal his perpetually active 
 mind never showed signs of flagging, under 
 burdens that would have killed half a dozen 
 ordinary men. 
 
 Most busy men are obliged to evade a little 
 their early friendships, for the attentions of 
 friendship are often a strain upon a mind al- 
 ready overwhelmed. But Mr. Thompson was 
 preeminently a friend. No man ever had more 
 friends, and no man was ever more ready to
 
 AS KNOWN TO A FRIEND. 83 
 
 serve his friends. It was a matter of laughter 
 with some of us that Mr. Thompson was always 
 introducing some college classmate we had never 
 before heard of. Everybody that was ever associ- 
 ated intimately with him in the way of business 
 or of pleasure was attracted by him, and he was 
 hospitable to all kinds of friends, finding some- 
 thing in common with all. Few things human 
 were foreign to him. This friendliness often made 
 him tolerant in his judgment of public men. 
 He knew and liked a man on his good side, and 
 he found it hard to be too severe on his public 
 course. If anything could ever have persuaded 
 him to act in a way unworthy of him it would 
 have been this general friendliness and catholic 
 tolerance. But he stood this test. The leaders 
 of his party, who were his friends in a way, 
 once arranged to have him take a seat in a 
 State Convention. At the last moment he 
 learned that he was to go under instructions 
 to do what he did not think right. "I am not 
 that kind of a man," was his answer, and he 
 was left out of the delegation. 
 
 His public and semi-public services were 
 many. I will recur to the one I knew the
 
 84 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 most about. Some years ago he was elected 
 Secretary of the Authors Club. The club, under 
 a series of unfavorable circumstances, had lost 
 ground, to say the least. Mr. Thompson made 
 himself felt from the first week of his secreta^- 
 ship. He laid his hand on every weak spot. 
 The first constitution, for which I was partly 
 responsible, had been outgrown and had been 
 unwisely amended. Mr. Thompson carried 
 through a motion for a new constitution, 
 and elaborated the instrument with the advice 
 of his fellow-committeemen. He reduced the 
 business of the club to a system ; he became the 
 voluntary legal guide of the club as a corpora- 
 tion ; he took an active part, as a member of the 
 Library Committee, in developing and cata- 
 loguing the library ; he secured for the archives 
 of the association sketches of the lives of the 
 members; he attended to such details as the 
 better printing of the cards of invitation and 
 the Year-book, and, without meddling with 
 work assigned to others, he was the common 
 reservoir for information and advice, and all 
 this while carrying on many other activities. He 
 had the pleasure of seeing the Authors attain
 
 AS KNOWN TO A FRIEND. 85 
 
 an unprecedented prosperity, partly through his 
 own pervasive activity and stimulating energy. 
 To a mind of large intelligence, rare versatil- 
 ity, and almost incredible activity, he joined an 
 honorable nature and a generous heart. No 
 man in New York would be missed in so many 
 spheres of action and social life, and by so 
 manv friends.
 
 AS A PHILOSOPHIC THINKER.
 
 AS A PHILOSOPHIC THINKER. 
 
 As a philosophic thinker, Daniel Greenleaf 
 Thompson was clear, comprehensive and pro- 
 found. He was eclectic in spirit, and could see 
 truth in all systems of thought. His mind was 
 sympathetic and reconciliative rather than com- 
 bative and destructive, and his disposition was 
 to find the truths in opposing conceptions and 
 to unite them in a larger synthesis, rather than 
 to dwell on the errors and contradictions of 
 theories and systems. With his clearness of per- 
 ception and large knowledge, combined with 
 analytical ability, he was a good critic, but his 
 mind was too constructive, too synthetic to 
 allow him to be satisfied with mere criticism. 
 He was an admirer, and in no small sense, a dis- 
 ciple of Herbert Spencer, whose thought he 
 helped to expound and whose work was highly 
 valued by "our great philosopher." 
 
 Mr. Thompson belonged to the experimental 
 school of philosophy, but not as it was held be- 
 fore it was modified by the conception of evolu- 
 tion by evolution applied to the mind as well 
 as to organic structure. In his great work on
 
 90 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 Psychology, better known and more appreciated 
 in England than in this country, Mr. Thomp- 
 son, following Spencer, and adding some origi- 
 nal reflections, shows, with admirable clearness, 
 how what was once experimental has become a 
 priori, how the acquisitions of centuries have 
 become organized as aptitudes and predisposi- 
 tion in the race. 
 
 He recognized a transcendental element in 
 mind, but he maintained that man as phenom- 
 enally known is a product of an evolutionary 
 process, and that the explanation of the individ- 
 ual must be in the race, in the sequent order 
 which culminated in man not in a supernat- 
 ural intrusion, which created man de novo, and 
 gave to him a nature without genetic relation- 
 ship with ancestral life. 
 
 Mr. Thompson was acosmic philosopher. His 
 theism was all embracing in a large sense, 
 pantheistic; for with him God was "the infinite 
 and eternal energy from which all things proceed" 
 the principle of activity and life immanent in 
 all phenomena, from the movement of a pebble to 
 the revolution of a planet, from the sensation of 
 a worm to the genius of a Shakespeare.
 
 AS A PHILOSOPHIC THINKER. 91 
 
 Mr. Thompson was hopeful, and no pessimist. 
 If he was not an optimist, he was a meliorist. 
 He believed that the world is improving, and 
 that human effort can contribute to its advance- 
 ment. He did not regard the "bank and shoal 
 of time" as the certain limits of the soul's exist- 
 ence. He saw in physical phenomena indica- 
 tions of some kind of life beyond the dissolution 
 of the body. This with him was a hope, a faith, 
 but he would not dogmatize on the subject. He 
 believed that back of the material is the spirit- 
 ual, that underlying the phenomenal is the 
 nominal, and that the essential element in man 
 is from everlasting to everlasting. As a philos- 
 opher Daniel Greenleaf Thompson is most ap- 
 preciated by those real thinkers, who knew him 
 best. But he was a man of heart, as well as of 
 intellect, and by those among his friends who 
 possess both, he will be remembered, while they 
 live, as one of the brightest and noblest of men.
 
 FRIEND, PARTNER, CLIENT.
 
 FRIEND, PARTNER, CLIENT. 
 
 Daniel Greenleaf Thompson was but forty- 
 seven years of age when he died, yet he had ac- 
 complished more intellectual work than most 
 men do in three score and ten. He had attained 
 high rank in his profession, and was one of the 
 foremost, if not the foremost authority in psy- 
 chology in this country. His mind was decid- 
 edly of a philosophical bent. He devoted the 
 hours which others gave to pleasure and recrea- 
 tion, to the study of the intricate science of psy- 
 chology. As the result of his application and 
 methodical labors he published in 1884 his great 
 work, entitled " A System of Psychology," in two 
 volumes of 600 pages each, which received the 
 highest commendation from the savants of that 
 science, and among others from Bain and Her- 
 bert Spencer. This work was followed, in 1886, 
 by another in the field of ethics, entitled the 
 "Problem of Evil;" two years later, in 1888, 
 appeared another thoughtful book displaying 
 deep psychological research, entitled "Religious 
 Sentiments of the Human Mind." In 1889 his 
 "Social Progress" was published, and in 1892
 
 96 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 his "Philosophy of Fiction in Literature," and 
 finally in 1893 appeared a work from his pen of 
 a more popular nature, yet illustrating some of 
 his philosphical ideas, the title of which is 
 " Politics in a Democracy." All this time he fol- 
 lowed, without interruption, his profession, be- 
 sides delivering various lectures before learned 
 bodies in this city and Brooklyn, and contrib- 
 uting thoughtful articles for magazines in this 
 country and in Europe. His facility for literary 
 work was great. He accomplished so much be- 
 cause of his systematic methods and his excel- 
 lent control of his physical and mental powers. 
 He never appeared to be overworked or hurried. 
 To a casual acquaintance Mr. Thompson ap- 
 peared rather as a man who loved leisure and 
 personal comfort, than as an industrious stu- 
 dent. He was most methodical in all he did. 
 He was a ready thinker, speaker, and writer. 
 He divided up his time with system and order ; 
 he had his regular hours for his literary work, 
 day in and day out; then he repaired to his 
 office work, where he gave his concentrated 
 attention to the duties of his profession, and 
 the evenings he devoted to the society of his
 
 FRIEND, PARTNER, CLIENT. 97 
 
 wife, his friends and to miscellaneous literary oc- 
 cupations. His amusements were chiefly intel- 
 lectual. For several years he was president of 
 the Nineteenth Century Club, succeeding Court- 
 landt Palmer, the founder of that club. He was 
 for years, until his death, the secretary and a 
 member of the Governing Council of the Authors 
 Club. This position required considerable 
 thought, work, and detail, all of which he did 
 with that system and ease so natural to him. 
 Annually he prepared for publication the Au- 
 thors Club book, which contains, under the 
 name of each member, the books he has written, 
 with the date of publication, and has genuine 
 bibliographical value. 
 
 I first became acquainted with Mr. Thomp- 
 son in 1876, when he entered as managing clerk 
 the office of the law firm of which I was a mem- 
 ber. We soon, thereafter, became associated as 
 partners, and from that time our friendship con- 
 tinued in close intimacy until his death. He 
 had a wonderful charm of manner; he was kind, 
 sincere, and considerate. 
 
 I am asked to describe his general character. 
 This it is not possible for me to do without
 
 98 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 writing a panegyric, and this I know would be 
 distasteful to him if living. It is the source of 
 the greatest satisfaction and pleasure to me to 
 have been so long and intimately associated 
 with him. Upon my retirement from the prac- 
 tice of the law he became my legal adviser, and 
 in my literary work was a helpful guide and 
 critic. He had a calm, cheerful temperament 
 and a sympathetic heart. He took a deep in- 
 terest in the welfare of his friends, and no as- 
 sistance he could render them was denied, but 
 always freely and willingly given. He had all 
 the qualities that constitute greatness, and espe- 
 cially those which would have fitted him to have 
 become a judge of the highest rank. His mind 
 was well equipped with legal principles, and his 
 finely developed sense of right and justice, free 
 from all narrow restraints and partisan views, 
 marked him for a judicial career. As an advo- 
 cate he was less well qualified than as a safe, 
 reliable and conservative counselor, and for 
 that reason his triumphs were of a less con- 
 spicuous order ; they were as an advisor rather 
 than as a trial lawyer. He was more effective 
 before the court, or in cases of appeal, than in
 
 FRIEND, PARTNER, CLIENT. 99 
 
 jury cases; his philosophical studies inclined him 
 to clear and logical elucidations of evidence and 
 principles, rather than to the strife of the trial 
 
 court. 
 
 Like his father, the author of the " Green 
 
 Mountain Boys," he had natural literary gifts, 
 and, like him, he attained a greater reputation 
 outside of his profession than in it, due, no 
 doubt, to circumstances that shape the lives 
 of us all, rather than to direction. His ami- 
 able temperament, his kind considerateness and 
 unselfishness, united with his admirable quali- 
 ties of mind, not only attached many friends 
 to him, but he had the rare quality that so few 
 possess of attaching his friends to each other ; 
 so that on the day when from far and near his 
 friends assembled to pay the last respects to his 
 remains, it was apparent that the dead they 
 had come to mourn had left to the living a 
 legacy of mutual esteem and friendship.
 
 LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS.
 
 LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS. 
 
 MADISON, Wis., January 22, 1898. 
 DEAR MRS. THOMPSON : 
 
 Though circumstances have denied me the 
 preparation within the time fixed for the issu- 
 ance of your memorial volume of a fitting and 
 satisfactory expression of the respect and 
 tenderness with which my heart treasures the 
 image of your deceased husband, I am very 
 grateful for the privilege your letter gives me of 
 following the train of other friends who will 
 worthily honor his cherished memory, and of 
 laying, even thus hastily, my sprig of rosemary 
 among the garlands of loving remembrance on 
 his tomb. 
 
 Back in the old Green Hills of Vermont our 
 roots were nurtured in the same soil and like 
 principles and lines of thought set indelibly in 
 our characters. His father and mine, the fami- 
 lies of both, were familiar friends in days long 
 gone; and, though the migration hither in 
 1851 of my father, with his flock, for a time put 
 distance between them, yet it so happened that
 
 104 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 here came, also, after the interval of years, the 
 widowed mother, a sister and a brother of Mr. 
 Thompson, and the renewed pleasures of inter- 
 course were thenceforward unbrokenly enjoyed 
 until, one after another, the links of the circle 
 disappeared through the portals of the grave. 
 An innate consciousness of his powers, how- 
 ever, always overruled by winning gentleness 
 and modesty, naturally drew your husband to 
 the great center of affairs, where, immersed in 
 professional labors, to which he added the 
 adornment of philosophical and literary studies, 
 he passed his life. But the ties of family love 
 drew him also hither from time to time, and so 
 distance of residence failed to impair the sympa- 
 thy of friendship which he shared, as giver and 
 receiver, in full measure among us. In more 
 recent years I met him elsewhere, too, and, 
 though in the fitful hurry of these modern days 
 of electrified life our meetings were but too 
 short, as now sadly seen in retrospect, the 
 beliefs, feelings, and traditions we held in com- 
 mon united us so closely that a touch of the 
 hand, a glance of the eye were a communion to 
 keep our bond firm and hearts warm.
 
 LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS. 105 
 
 So it is that, while I know the merits of his 
 work and gratefully rejoice that fitter pens will 
 record the excellence of his literary legacies and 
 tell his high estimation, at the bar and in social 
 life, I am thinking of him now more as the 
 friend whose sympathy met mine at every point 
 of contact, and would inscribe on his monu- 
 ment rather the simple tribute of affectionate 
 remembrance. 
 
 He was, to me, singularly attractive in the 
 gentle ways which gave his companionship a 
 constant charm. Always appreciative, inter- 
 esting and pleasing in conversation, both easily 
 original and responsive in thought, it was a 
 winsome kindness of manner that carried the 
 flattery of esteem and regard to one's heart 
 without open words, which made him a com- 
 rade whom love \vould tie to. 
 
 I recall, now, in vivid recollection, the delight- 
 ful hours I passed with him when driving 
 together, during his last visit here, in the glori- 
 ous sunshine of a perfect day, along a winding 
 road by the margin of our Lake Mendota, 
 where pictures of Nature were spread in a suc- 
 cession of beautiful views as we moved along.
 
 106 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 The genial airs, the exquisite coloring, the 
 delicious combinations of clouds and sunshine 
 on earth and water in the continually changing 
 scene affected him to a rapture of enjoyment 
 which excited his mind to brilliant and elevated 
 expression that told most happily the sweet- 
 ness of his inner soul. 
 
 Sweeter still be his visions now, and his 
 ioys evermore! 
 
 And may you find, dear Madame, in your 
 contemplation of him in his manhood as he 
 was, in visions of him in the arms of Infinite 
 Mercy and Love, consolations for the sorrow 
 which none may share with you. 
 
 Most respectfully and kindly,
 
 LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS. 107 
 
 JOSHUA'S ROCK, 
 LAKE GEORGE, 2 July, 1897. 
 
 MY DEAR FRIEND: 
 
 * * * We know nothing of any details. 
 We only know you have suffered this great loss 
 and break-up of your life and that it came sud- 
 denly. We know that loneliness and sorrow is 
 your lot and our hearts go out to you. The old 
 times of pleasant companionship come back 
 vividly to me. I shall not any more enjoy the 
 pleasant evenings in your apartment, discussing 
 the last books or pictures, or talking at random 
 of other days and other lands. I remember 
 how you and Mr. Thompson made me at home 
 with you when I was all alone, and how he 
 would come to the door and smilingly say: 
 " The madame thinks it would be better for you 
 to come and sit with us this evening." Then, 
 too, at other times, we all four enjoyed our 
 evenings with you or with us. It seems a great 
 break, now that he is gone. We fear that you 
 will leave New York; and, at any rate, death 
 has broken into our circle. It is hard to think 
 of a mind so ceaselesslv active and a heart so
 
 108 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 faithfully friendly as stilled forever. There are 
 many -who will miss him, but, outside his own 
 house, none, perhaps, more than we. 
 
 I have not written you the ordinary letter 
 of condolence. It is not necessary for me to tell 
 you how much I esteem and like Mr. Thomp- 
 son. I cannot offer you consolations ; they do 
 not soften the severity of such a sorrow. But 
 I can assure you of the sincere sympathy of a 
 
 friend. 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 EDWARD EGGLESTON. 
 
 58 WILLIAM ST., July 10. 
 MY DEAR MRS. THOMPSON : 
 
 I have just heard the terrible news. You 
 have lost the best of husbands and I the best 
 friend I ever had. You have my deepest sym- 
 pathy. 
 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 WALTER S. LOGAN.
 
 LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS. 109 
 
 BROOKLYN, N. Y., July 13, 1897. 
 DEAR MRS. THOMPSON: 
 
 Of the many who will offer their sincere con- 
 dolence in your sorrow, few knew Mr. Thomp- 
 son longer, and none loved him more than I. 
 Thirty-two years is a long time to test a friend- 
 ship, and this grew with the years. 
 
 Experience has taught me that in hours like 
 these words are naught. I can only say he was 
 my brother, and I could not mourn one of my 
 own blood more. 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 H. L. BRIDGMAN. 
 
 55 MUNN AYE., 
 EAST ORANGE, N. J., July 12, 1897. 
 
 MY DEAR MRS. THOMPSON : 
 
 Allow me, as one who greatly admired and 
 loved your husband, to express to you my 
 deepest sympathy in your bereavement. The 
 world knows of his ability and public works, 
 but it was reserved for those who met him
 
 110 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 socially and familiarly to discover his great 
 qualities of heart. Though my intercourse 
 with him was limited chiefly at the Authors 
 Club I shall always be grateful to good Provi- 
 dence for allowing my life to touch one so noble 
 as his. 
 
 I am, my dear madame, with deepest sym- 
 pathy, 
 
 Sincerely, 
 
 JAMES M. LUDLOW. 
 
 CONVENT STATION, Morris County, 
 
 July 15, 1897. 
 MY DEAR HUTTON: 
 
 I did not hear of Thompson's death until 
 Monday. I was shocked and truly grieved. I 
 did not know Thompson very well, but liked 
 him very much, as every one did, I am sure. He 
 seemed the very soul and moving spirit of the 
 Authors Club, and no one could have appeared 
 more likely to live. In my intercourse with him 
 I found him of a most generous spirit always 
 kind and reasonable a man I would have been 
 glad to know better.
 
 LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS. Ill 
 
 I am not acquainted with Mrs. Thompson, 
 nor do I know her address, but if you should 
 see or communicate with her, I will ask you to 
 assure her of my deep sympathy with her. I do 
 not know when I have so much felt the loss of a 
 fellow author. 
 
 With kind regards to Mrs. Hutton, sincerely 
 
 yours, 
 
 FRANK R. STOCKTON. 
 
 LEWISTON, N. Y., 19th July, 1897. 
 MY DEAR MRS. THOMPSON : 
 
 In forwarding to you this note of Mr. Stock- 
 ton, may I add a word of my own ? My asso- 
 ciation with Mr. Thompson in the management 
 of the Authors Club was so pleasant and so 
 intimate that I feel that I have sustained a per- 
 sonal loss, as I grieve with as well as for you. 
 His place in the Club no man can fill, and the 
 world is sadder without him. I beg to sub- 
 scribe myself in sincerest sympathy, 
 
 Very faithfully yours, 
 
 LAWRENCE HUTTON.
 
 112 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 461 E. TWENTY-FIRST ST., N. Y. 
 
 July 13, 1897. 
 MY VERY DEAR FRIEND: 
 
 * * * Death is and always will be sudden, 
 and there seems to be little to console one. 
 Time, and that only partially, works a cure. I 
 trust you have some faith or philosophy that 
 will give you strength and courage for the trials 
 of your life. I know by experience how helpful 
 
 they may be. 
 
 Very sincerely, 
 
 M. L. HOLBROOK. 
 
 OXFORD, ME., July 19, 1897. 
 MY DEAR MRS. THOMPSON : 
 
 In the presence of this calamity there is really 
 not anything any one can say, and I shall not 
 attempt to say anything. There is no real com- 
 fort to be found in a case of complete loss such 
 as this. But yet the very suddenness, absolute- 
 ness and blankness of the event has its own sug- 
 gestion of hope. It seems to me to indicate 
 strongly that the separation is only a temporary 
 one. Daniel is gone ; that is the plain fact just
 
 LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS. 113 
 
 now ; but he can't be gone for an eternal stay, 
 or even for a very long stay, or he wouldn't 
 here have been lent in the full maturity of his 
 powers, in haste and casualness, as it were. 
 Anyhow, that is my philosophy, and all the con- 
 solation I can offer. You will find him waiting 
 just outside the door of life whenever you join 
 him in spirit; waiting later, when you join him 
 in reality. I cherish a little meeting on the ele- 
 vated stairs with Daniel just a month ago last 
 Friday a most perfect bit of a meeting and 
 greeting. After all, my dear Mrs. Thompson, 
 what is this life but a stairway on which we 
 meet and which leads to a higher life beyond ? 
 Your friend, 
 
 F. H. STODDARD. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, MASS., July 12, 1897. 
 DEAR MRS. THOMPSON : 
 
 I am deeply grieved and inexpressibly shocked 
 
 by the sudden death of my uncle, whom I always 
 
 hoped to know better than I did, and whom I 
 
 always respected highly for his great abilities, 
 
 15
 
 114 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 and liked for his unfailing charm of manner. 
 That he should die so young, at a time when 
 life still held for him so many possibilities of 
 happiness and service, seems peculiarly tragic 
 and hard to bear. I wish to assure you of my 
 deepest sympathy with you in your sorrow 
 for a brilliant career cut short, and for your 
 own personal loss as a wife. * * * 
 
 I am, my dear Mrs. Thompson, with the 
 greatest sympathy and respect, 
 
 Yours, 
 CHARLES MINOR THOMPSON. 
 
 41 WALL ST., NEW YORK, July 30. 
 
 * * * Mr. Thompson was so uniformly 
 kind and always bright and encouraging, one 
 of the most lovable men in the whole world. 
 Many of the friends I most depended on have 
 gone within the last few years, and now that 
 my family are so far away, I find I have almost 
 no one I can go and talk with. So far as Mr. 
 Thompson was personally concerned, he had 
 accomplished the work of a lifetime, and in that 
 sense his death was not premature. But all the
 
 LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS. 115 
 
 more, his departure leaves grief and bereave- 
 ment in the hearts of his friends, who hoped, in 
 the less hurried days to come, to enjoy and de- 
 pend upon his society and friendship. 
 
 I know full well that the loss which all his 
 friends feel is but light compared to yours. It 
 is a fortunate thing that in such unbearable 
 trouble and separation, we have at last a hope 
 of reunion, and, in any event, that grief cannot 
 endure forever, because at last even to the long- 
 est life comes final rest. 
 
 With fond and faithful remembrance of the 
 
 
 
 dear friend who is gone, and sincere sympathy 
 
 for you, I am, 
 
 Sincerely, 
 
 JOHN K. CREEVEY. 
 
 MAPLECREST, 
 WHITE PLAINS, N. Y., Aug. 1, 1897. 
 
 MY DEAR MRS. THOMPSON : 
 
 I can hardly tell you how shocked I was, on 
 the eve of sailing from Liverpool, to receive 
 tidings of Daniel's sudden death. I cannot yet 
 realize the fact. I am sitting on the piazza, just
 
 116 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 where we sat and chatted only six weeks ago, 
 and my absence being so brief, that I hardly 
 know I have been away, makes it the more diffi- 
 cult to grasp the stern reality of any marked 
 changes having occurred meanwhile. 
 
 I have known Dan better in late years than 
 in college, even, and the pleasant acquaintance 
 and cordial friendship that has ripened out of 
 our common residence and frequent meetings in 
 New York will always be a source of pleasure 
 for me to recall. His attainments, literary and 
 legal, commanded my admiration, and from all 
 sides I shall miss him as I mourned his loss. 
 You will hardly doubt, then, the continuous 
 thought that I have had of you in your afflic- 
 tion, nor the sincerity of my sympathy, which 
 now my pen can inadequately convey. * * * 
 WILLIAM REYNOLDS BROWN. 
 
 MADISON, Wis., July 10. 
 DEAR SISTER HENRIETTA: 
 
 I cannot express to you how deeply shocked 
 and grieved I was to learn from this morning's 
 dispatch of the death of your husband. I think
 
 LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS. 117 
 
 my dear brother must have passed away very 
 suddenly, for if he had been dangerously sick for 
 any length of time you would have advised me. 
 My own grief at the loss of his sister Alma, who 
 was my beloved wife, teaches me how great 
 must be your sorrow. * * * 
 With heartfelt sympathy, I am, 
 Your brother, 
 
 GEORGE D. BURROWS. 
 
 NEW YORK, July 15. 
 
 * * * Words are empty of meaning at such 
 a moment. Death is pitiless; but even death 
 cannot take away the memory of the happy 
 years you have had together, and as time goes 
 on this memory will prove an increasing store 
 of comfort and consolation. I esteemed it a 
 high privilege to feel that Mr. Thompson 
 counted me among his friends, and I hope that 
 you will permit me to be of any and every ser- 
 vice to you, that one of your or his sincere 
 friends could render. 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 HORACE E. DEMING.
 
 118 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 MARIENBAD, BOHEMIA, AUSTRIA, 
 HOTEL WEIMAR, July 16, 1897. 
 
 DEAR MRS. THOMPSON : 
 
 It is difficult to put into words the pain and 
 shock which the announcement of the sud- 
 den death of your dear husband gave us all. 
 We send you our profound sympathy in your 
 great grief. Mr. Thompson's loss will be felt by 
 a very large circle of friends who knew him in 
 one relation or another. I knew him in many 
 ways and feel his loss in all. May God comfort 
 you. My wife and daughter extend their sincere 
 
 sympathy to you. 
 
 Very sincerely, 
 
 SIMON STERNE. 
 
 WATERVILLE, N. H., July 18, 1897. 
 MY DEAR MRS. THOMPSON : 
 
 I presume I am indebted to your thoughtful- 
 ness for my first knowledge of your great sor- 
 row. The shock and surprise were too great 
 for immediate belief in the fact. "Dan 
 Thompson dead!" I keep repeating to myself
 
 LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS. 119 
 
 with little real belief in the words I utter. I 
 think of our long years of friendship, never 
 broken, though of late interrupted. I think ot 
 his ceaseless activity, his bright attainments, 
 and his still higher ideals. I reflect upon the 
 nobility and breadth of his comradeship, upon 
 the beauty and content of his home life, and my 
 heart refuses to believe him dead. Rather, he 
 seems like the dead Hereward, "alive forever- 
 more," alive in what he did, and yet more in 
 what he was. I am glad that he and you are 
 spared the experience of declining strength. 
 Better that he should go in the fullness of his 
 powers, his eyes undimmed and his natural force 
 unabated, than that he should linger, the 
 shadow of what he was. 
 
 Be assured, my dear Mrs. Thompson, of my 
 heartiest sympathy in a loss which affects you 
 most nearly and tenderly of all the wide circle 
 of mourners. May the consolations of God, 
 which are neither few nor small, abound to you 
 more and more. Mrs. Chickering unites with 
 me in remembrance. 
 
 Cordially yours, 
 
 Jos. H. CHICKERING.
 
 120 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 WILLIAMS COLLEGE, 
 WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., July 14, 1897. 
 
 MY DEAR MRS. THOMPSON : 
 
 I was greatly shocked and pained to find in a 
 Boston paper yesterday a notice of the sudden 
 death of Mr. Thompson. Coming so soon after 
 the death of Mr. Brown, in Springfield, this 
 news is another warning of the uncertainty of 
 life. The group of friends who knew each other 
 well in Springfield is rapidly thinning. Mr. 
 Thompson was a man of remarkable intellect- 
 ual powers. I respected and admired him. He 
 was a loyal friend, ready to serve his friends 
 regardless of inconvenience to himself. We had 
 many happy hours together in the old days, and 
 I still recall, vividly, the keenness of his argu- 
 ments in any discussion. His mind was philo- 
 sophical to a high degree, as was shown, not 
 merely by his printed works but by his conver- 
 sation. His death is a loss to the world. All 
 his friends will mourn with you in your sorrow. 
 I regret that I am so far away (Northeast Har- 
 bor, Me.) that I cannot be present at his 
 funeral. And the Boston paper which I saw
 
 LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS. 121 
 
 yesterday, though giving a somewhat extended 
 account of his life and work, gives no particu- 
 lars of his death. With the deepest sympathy 
 and regret, I remain, Yours very truly, 
 
 O. M. FERNALD. 
 
 2653 EVANSTON AVENUE, 
 
 CHICAGO, July 27, 1897. 
 DEAR MRS. THOMPSON: 
 
 I learned with deep sorrow some days ago of 
 the sudden death of your husband on the 10th 
 instant. Permit me to express to you the assur- 
 ance of my sympathy with you in this sad be- 
 reavement. I admired Mr. Thompson for his abili- 
 ties and attainments, and esteemed him highly 
 for his fine personal qualities. I shall never 
 forget the hours which I passed with him and 
 with you at two different times at your home 
 in the Chelsea, and the interviews which I had 
 with him in his office. I shall always remember 
 with pride that of the two copies of his Psychol- 
 ogy which were sent for review to the Boston 
 press, one copy was sent to me. Mr. Thompson 
 
 16
 
 122 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 lived a most useful life, and I deeply regret that 
 his earthly career has been brought to a close 
 when he could, had he lived, have done much 
 more splendid work. My hope is, as was his, 
 that death is a birth into a higher life in which 
 are united those who lived here. 
 
 Mrs. Underwood joins me in heartfelt sym- 
 pathy and kind regards. 
 
 Respecfully yours, 
 
 B. F. UNDERWOOD. 
 
 42 WARREN ST., N. Y., July 26, 1897. 
 MY DEAR MRS. THOMPSON: 
 
 * * * I know no one outside of my imme- 
 diate family whose loss I could feel more deeply 
 and whom I miss more. Dan was my nearest 
 and dearest friend, and I mourn him every day 
 and hour. Even if sometimes a week or more 
 passed without our meeting, he was never ab- 
 sent from my mind or from my affections. I 
 was more intimately and closely attached to 
 him than to any other man, save only my two 
 brothers. He was a friend to whom I could
 
 LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS. 123 
 
 speak just as I thought or felt, we knew one an- 
 other so well, and were so thoroughly assured 
 of each other's loyalty and friendship. 
 
 I know your grief is deep, though I can well 
 understand no one can measure the bereave- 
 ment of your aching heart. 
 With sincere regards, I am, 
 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 OSCAR S. STRAUS. 
 
 .BARNARD CLUB, CARNEGIE BUILDING, 
 
 November 11, 1897. 
 MY DEAR MRS. THOMPSON : 
 
 In accordance with the desire of the Commit- 
 tee on Admissions of the Barnard Club, I inclose 
 to you a copy of the resolutions passed by the 
 committee, at its meeting held Monday, Novem- 
 ber 8th. 
 
 "Since our last meeting, in June, we have suf- 
 fered a sad loss in the death of Daniel G. 
 Thompson. To those of us who, happily, 
 knew him well, his death is a personal sorrow 
 to be commemorated in our hearts alone. But 
 we, as a committee, who have known and 
 appreciated his just, earnest, and kindly advice
 
 124 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 and help, desire to record our testimony to the 
 service that he has done for the committee and 
 for the Club. We have lost a wise adviser, a 
 scholarly associate and a true friend, and we 
 shall never cease to regret the loss of his counsel 
 and companionship." 
 
 I am, very truly yours, 
 
 EVA P. BROWNELL, 
 Secretary of the Committee on Admissions. 
 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA, N. Y., 
 
 August 13, 1897. 
 MY DEAR MRS. THOMPSON : 
 
 I was absent from home at the time of the 
 death of your husband. Could I have reached 
 you I should have endeavored to do so, to have 
 paid to him my last token of esteem. We were 
 classmates, and only the most delightful mem- 
 ories remain of a friendship extending over 
 thirty years. Even in those days his future 
 promise was evident. Everything that he did he 
 did with apparent ease and with high excellence. 
 I met him in Cleveland, in December, for the last 
 time, and, although he seemed well, there was 
 a marked change in his appearance, which led
 
 LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS. 125 
 
 me to fear that his life with us was to be short. 
 Please accept my sincere sympathy in your 
 loss. I trust that you will retain, in intimate 
 remembrance, through all your life, those who 
 were so attached to your husband, of whom I 
 was grateful to be one. Yours sincerely, 
 
 W. T. HEWETT. 
 Mrs. Daniel Greenleaf Thompson. 
 
 LENOX, Mass., July 13. 
 MY DEAR MRS. THOMPSON : 
 
 Please accept the assurance of my deep sor- 
 row at the sudden death of your husband. 
 Daniel and I had been intimate friends in addi- 
 tion to being classmates at Amherst. I have 
 always felt great regret that, since those days, 
 our lives have been separated. I have followed, 
 with great interest and pride, his brilliant 
 career. I was wholly unprepared for his sud- 
 den taking away. I trust that you were, in 
 some measure, prepared for it. Little as I have 
 seen of Daniel I have always had the feeling 
 that our lives were to come together again
 
 126 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 and I have always known that he had a decided 
 regard and affection for me (which I more than 
 reciprocated) and which I felt would help us to 
 take up the old friendship again, without delay, 
 when we did meet. Now, this companionship 
 must be postponed but only postponed. 
 Most sincerely yours, 
 
 RICHARD GOODMAN, Jr. 
 
 POTTSVILLE, Pa., July 2, 1897. 
 MY DEAR MRS. THOMPSON : 
 
 All the members of the class of '69 at Amherst 
 have been greatly saddened by the announce- 
 ment of the death of your dear husband. I do 
 not wish to intrude upon your sorrow, but per- 
 mit me to express my warmest sympathy. He 
 was the youngest member of our class, but from 
 the first he was recognized as one of the ablest, 
 and no one has been surprised at the distinction 
 which he gained in his profession, in general 
 literature and especially by his philosophical 
 writings. We were members of the same Fra- 
 ternity, and while we have not met often in
 
 LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS. 127 
 
 recent years, the memories of our friendship 
 have been among the most cherished of my 
 college life. 
 
 My father was at one time principal of the 
 academy at Montpelier,Vt., and a friend of Judge 
 Thompson, your husband's father. This led to 
 our early acquaintance and friendship when we 
 met at Amherst. 
 
 But I must not trespass further upon your 
 time. With renewed assurance of loving sym- 
 pathy, I am, sincerely yours, 
 
 JOHN H. EASTMAN. 
 
 120 BROADWAY, July 10, 1897. 
 DEAR MRS. THOMPSON : 
 
 It is with the greatest sorrow that I have 
 learned from Mr. Hanford of the sudden death 
 of your husband, my old associate and genial 
 friend. Let me express my sincere condolence to 
 you in your grief, and assure you that you have 
 the sympathy of an exceptionally large number 
 of friends. For the happy and cheerful tempera- 
 ment of Mr. Thompson endeared him to all, who
 
 128 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 came to know him. His death will cause asense 
 of very great personal loss, and it is an added 
 sorrow that it is only possible for one to express 
 at such a time, deep sympathy with you in your 
 
 bereavement. 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 CHARLES E. LYDECKER. 
 
 ROSEBANK, HOBART, TASMANIA, 
 
 October 18, 1897. 
 MY DEAR MRS. THOMPSON: 
 
 We are in receipt of your letter to us of the 
 21st of August, and I cannot put into words 
 the shock which it has given us. Only four 
 weeks ago I posted my last letter to your dear 
 husband, which, I presume, will be duly sent to 
 you. I cannot think of New York without him. 
 All my most precious memories of it are asso- 
 ciated with him, as no part of the United States 
 will seem the same to me again. It is a little 
 more than seven years since I first met him, and 
 during the whole of that time he and his books 
 have been a part of my life to me. His books
 
 LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS. 129 
 
 will be doubly dear to me in the future, and I 
 hope that his friends will secure the publication 
 of whatever manuscripts he has left behind him. 
 My wife and I fondly hoped that he and you 
 would visit Australia, and that we should have 
 the pleasure of making you our guests in Tas- 
 mania. If you have a photograph of him which 
 you can spare for us, we shall preserve it with 
 affectionate care. My wife is writing to you, 
 and leaving her to say whatever I have omitted, 
 I am, with intense sympathy, very sincerely 
 
 yours, 
 
 A. INGLIS CLARK. 
 
 HATFIELD, Mass., July 14, 1897. 
 DEAR MRS. THOMPSON: 
 
 The Standard Union has just come to me, tell- 
 ing me of the death of my dear friend and class- 
 mate. I write at once to assure you that I have 
 never once lost that admiration and affection 
 for Thompson that he won from me when we 
 were so intimate at Amherst. I have always 
 been deeply sensible, too, of his constant kindness
 
 130 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 and loyalty to me. Proud as I am of what he 
 achieved intellectually, I am sure he stood high- 
 est of all in the qualities of his heart. With 
 deepest sympathy for you in your bereavement, 
 
 I am, 
 
 Most sincerely yours, 
 
 ROBERT M. WOODS. 
 
 BRANDON, VT., 7/12, 1897. 
 MRS. DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON : 
 
 Accept my profound sympathy in your over- 
 whelming bereavement. I knew and loved your 
 lamented husband from his boyhood, when we 
 were both officially connected with the Vermont 
 Legislature. He was a gifted author, a gen- 
 erous, exalted soul, and I grieve with you 
 keenly at his untimely loss, which is a heavy be- 
 reavement, not only to yourself but to all 
 
 mankind. 
 
 JOHN H. FLAGG.
 
 OPINIONS AND DISCUSSIONS.
 
 A SYSTEM OF PSYCHOLOGY * 
 (1884.) 
 
 22 HYDE PARK GATE, 
 LONDON, S. W., October 16, 1897. 
 MY DEAR SIR : 
 
 I acknowledge at once the receipt of your 
 Psychology, for I might have to wait some time 
 if I waited till I had read it. This, I know, does 
 not look very polite, but my meaning is very 
 innocent. I can see at a glance that your book 
 requires more than a cursory reading, and with 
 an appetite. I can, therefore, only say at pres- 
 ent that I am glad to see a work proceeding 
 upon those lines I mean the Mill-Spencer-Bain 
 without the Hegelian taint which has been in- 
 flicting us here of late. 
 
 I regret that I was not able to see more of 
 you during your visit to Europe. If you should 
 
 * NOTE. Much latitude has been permitted in the follow- 
 ing extracts on account of the intrinsic interest of the discus- 
 sions and to show the cordial and sincere relations between 
 Mr. Thompson and his friends, whether they agreed or dis- 
 agreed. H. G. T.
 
 134 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 repeat it, I should be very glad to see you again, 
 and I hope that you would, in that case, give 
 me timely notice. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 LESLIE STEPHEN. 
 
 SOUTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, 
 
 BROOKLYN, N. Y., October 31, 1884. 
 
 MY DEAR FRIEND : 
 
 I was out of town when your books arrived, 
 and after my return I was obliged to attend 
 upon sick parishioners, etc. So that this is the 
 first moment in which I could express my thanks 
 to you for your courtesy and kindness in send- 
 ing me the volumes of Philosopy of the Mind. 
 
 The most hasty glance within the covers of 
 these volumes shows that you have understood 
 and emphasized the word with which your title 
 opens, the word "system" "A System of Psy- 
 chology." I have not as yet, of course, had time 
 to read anything, but I am proud of a friend 
 who has the intellectual hardihood to dare and 
 the intellectual persistency to execute a work so
 
 A SYSTEM OF PSYCHOLOGY. 135 
 
 comprehensive and formidable. The bits that I 
 have glanced at I admire the dedication, etc. 
 To have accomplished a work like this, my dear 
 Mr. Thompson, certainly imparts to any man's 
 whole life a certain inalienable dignity. I have 
 no question that the work, when I come to read 
 it, will fulfill to me every promise of its external 
 appearance, and every promise, also, which I 
 have made to me, through my pleasant ac- 
 quaintance with its author. 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 ALBERT J. LYMAN. 
 
 BROOKLYN, N. Y., November 10, 1884. 
 MY DEAR SIR : 
 
 Your two volumes came duly to hand, and 
 astonish me by their scope, material, and gen- 
 eral ability. I cannot, of course, speak critic- 
 ally of your system or its details, for I have not, 
 in this whirlwind of politics, had the even- 
 mindedness to perform such work. But I have 
 tasted of almost every part, with the eifect of 
 only exciting my appetite for more, and with
 
 136 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 the general impression that I shall approve 
 mostly, use the scalpel in spots, but the club 
 nowhere. I am, truly yours, 
 
 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 
 
 I am of Darwin and Spencer's School of 
 Thought but less a disciple of Mill and Bain 
 perhaps because less acquainted with their 
 writings. 
 
 626 CARLTON AVENUE, 
 BROOKLYN, N. Y., October 28, 1884. 
 MY DEAR MR. THOMPSON : 
 
 I am greatly obliged to you for your hand- 
 some book, and sincerely grateful. I should like 
 nothing better than to put everything else aside 
 and settle down to your exposition for a week 
 or two, but that is quite impossible. Just now 
 I am very busy, but before long I trust that I 
 shall be able to get at you. I am sure of plenty 
 of instruction when I do. I wish I could see you 
 now and then far from the madding crowd. 
 May I not hope to ? 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 JOHN W. CHADWICK.
 
 A SYSTEM OF PSYCHOLOGY. 137 
 
 AMHERST COLLEGE, 
 AMHERST, Mass., November 12, 1884. 
 
 MY DEAR FRIEND : 
 
 I have not yet read the whole of your 
 Psychology, which I have gratefully received 
 from you, but I must tell you how interested I 
 have been in the parts to which I have directed 
 my attention. I am not surprised at your 
 aptitude for thought, or for clear expression of 
 your thoughts, while the candor and the love 
 of truth, shining through all I have yet read, 
 also reveal what I have always known you to 
 possess. What are systems of thinking, what are 
 doctrines of any sort, philosophical or religious, 
 that we should prize them when the truth 
 alone is priceless? You will probably not be 
 surprised that the points of difference between 
 us are not obliterated by my reading of your 
 book, though I have often said to myself that 
 the difference is more apparent than real, and 
 that I could show you the deepest harmony of 
 much that you hold most prominently with 
 what has been all along held to be fundamental 
 in my teaching. Will you wonder if I even think 
 
 18
 
 138 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 I could convince you that among your own 
 cognitions, clearly recognized as such all along 
 in your book, there are those whose contents 
 not only, objects known, differ from all those 
 which sensation or reflection have given, but 
 which are attained, subject knowing, in a way 
 equally peculiar ? The question why you write 
 and why you expect to convince others by your 
 writing, would doubtless be answered by you 
 and me in the same way, but by neither of us 
 without involving in both the peculiar char- 
 acteristics which Dr. Hickok ascribes to the 
 reason. Would two thinkers ever disagree if 
 they perfectly understood one another? 
 
 I am sorry that you are unacquainted with 
 Kant, whose Kritik certainly if judged by the 
 lines of thought it has stimulated, the most 
 important contribution to Psychology since 
 Locke's "Essay" would, I cannot but think, 
 help you. 
 
 I shall be very glad to have our classes here, 
 whom Prof. Garman now is most ably teaching, 
 get your criticism of Hickok. If your book is 
 in any sense the result of his thinking, it is an 
 encouragement to keep planting the same seed. 

 
 A SYSTEM OF PSYCHOLOGY. 139 
 
 Ah, if we could only often have similar soil ! 
 * * * Rejoicing in your work and not fearing 
 that truth will suffer from any inquiry, I am 
 ever and most truly yours, 
 
 JULIUS H. SEEL YE. 
 
 Daniel Greenleaf Thompson, Esq. 
 
 NEW YORK, November 7, 1884-. 
 
 * * * I have made a hasty survey of your 
 book, although prevented from the full reading of 
 it by the pressure of business, and can readily see 
 that you have bestowed a great deal of research 
 upon your subject and not only studied it very 
 deeply, but elaborated your views with great 
 ability. It must have absorbed a great deal of 
 your time ; and it will, I trust, bring you an 
 ample reward, not merely in your personal 
 satisfaction in contributing to the elucidation 
 of the great problems involved, but also in an 
 enviable reputation among scientific men. 
 
 I confess that my own inclinations draw me 
 into more practical questions, and, to a large ex- 
 tent, disqualify me from judging critically of
 
 140 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 works like this. But I am none the less able to 
 appreciate their real value in the development 
 and progress of mankind. With many thanks 
 for so kindly remembering me, I remain, 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 THOMAS G. SHEARMAN. 
 
 626 CARLTON AVENUE, 
 BROOKLYN, N. Y., December 30, 1884. 
 DEAR MR. THOMPSON : 
 
 Inclosed find a brief notice of your book 
 which I wrote at Mr. Foord's request. It 
 seemed quite long in the MS., but it seems very 
 short in print. I thought I could serve the 
 book best by calling attention to it in a light 
 and pleasant way. In the rush of the holidays, 
 I could hardly do more, or expect to be read if 
 I did. I have read a good deal in the book with 
 sincere pleasure. You will believe that I wrote 
 "Sidgwick" and not "Sedgwick," but I never 
 could get a printer yet to follow me in that 
 
 particular. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 JOHN W. CHAD WICK.
 
 A SYSTEM OF PSYCHOLOGY. 141 
 
 117 EAST TWENTY-FIRST STREET, 
 GRAMERCY PARK, N. Y., 
 
 October 26, 1884. 
 MY DEAR MR. THOMPSON ; 
 
 A thousand thanks for your kindness in pre- 
 senting me with your "System of Psychology." 
 I want to read it far more than you want me 
 to. It rejoices me to know that men of your en- 
 viable brain power and brain endurance are so 
 earnestly at work in the good cause. 
 
 COURTLANDT PALMER. 
 
 NORTHAMPTON, Mass., November 7, 1884. 
 
 * I have read forty pages, and, to tell 
 the truth, am a little surprised that I can truth- 
 fully say that I shall read the whole with not 
 only attention but with great interest. I had 
 expected the work would be dignified and com- 
 plete, but I had not really anticipated that its 
 style and habit its walk and conversation, as 
 it were, would be so attractive. Value, you 
 know, is made in equal parts of style and stuff. 
 I knew you had the message to speak, but I had
 
 142 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 not anticipated such grace of utterance. But 
 I will not say much of the book till I have fully 
 read it. My first impression is favorable, and I 
 predict a future for it. Yours, 
 
 F. H. STODDARD. 
 
 1 E. TWENTY-EIGHTH STREET, 
 October 25, 1884. 
 
 I do not know how to thank you sufficiently 
 for your kind courtesy in sending me a copy of 
 your elaborate work, "A System of Psychol- 
 
 ogy." 
 
 You are, indeed, quite right in supposing that 
 such a work would be received by me in a sym- 
 pathetic spirit, and I feel flattered and honored 
 by the thought that you would find in me an 
 appreciative reader. As yet I have, of course, 
 only glanced at the book, but the table of con- 
 tents is a rare intellectual menu, and the intro- 
 duction suggests the able and delightful treat- 
 ment of a most attractive subject. You certainly 
 deserve infinite credit for the labor and effort
 
 A SYSTEM OF PSYCHOLOGY. 143 
 
 involved in such an unusually 'detailed produc- 
 tion. How you ever found time, with your busy 
 professional life, to accomplish such a feat, 
 passes my comprehension. I shall, from time to 
 time, partake of the banquet you have so gen- 
 erously placed before me, and I hope before very 
 long to have the pleasure of speaking to you of 
 my enjoyment and gratefully confessing my in- 
 struction. I am, dear sir, 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 GEORGE C. BARRETT. 
 Daniel G. Thompson, Esq. 
 
 ORANGE, N. J M December 24, 1884. 
 MY DEAR SIR : 
 
 I am reading your book with much interest. 
 It contains much valuable matter, some of it 
 new to me ; but I cannot accept your point of 
 view, which seems to me to have been hastily 
 assumed without due analysis. 
 
 I should contest in the most direct way your 
 very first position, that "the words know and 
 knowledge express an experience of sentient
 
 144 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 beings." I could hardly frame a statement more 
 faulty in logic and fact, and yet this assumption 
 runs through and colors the whole -work. 
 Knowledge, in the first place, is not an experience 
 of sentient beings as such, at all. The experience 
 of these beings as such, is sentience, sensation. 
 It is only intelligent beings that can have knowl- 
 edge and only as intelligent. If sentient beings 
 as such can know, then sensation is knowledge, 
 a position which is easily overthrown. In the 
 second place, sentient beings as such, cannot be 
 said to have experience properly so called at all. 
 Experience presupposes the presentation of time, 
 space, subject and object, and these (except, it 
 may be, space) are not matters of sensation. 
 Sensation feels no relations, and therefore makes 
 no distinctions, but without distinctions there 
 is no knowledge. This is a cardinal point and 
 the failure to seize it completely vitiates the 
 whole work of the English school. That school 
 is deficient in analysis, mingles up things that 
 are wide as the poles asunder. No wonder that 
 it arrives at agnosticism and other strange 
 results. The sole cause of agnosticism is bad 
 thinking and the confusion of sensation with
 
 A SYSTEM OF PSYCHOLOGY. 145 
 
 cognition. Don't be exasperated by my objur- 
 gations. I am always " 1' avvocato del dia- 
 vola;" but I am always a reasonable advocate. 
 Cordially yours, 
 
 THOMAS DAVIDSON. 
 
 THE CORNELL UNIVERSITY, 
 ITHACA, N. Y., November 16, 1884. 
 
 MY DEAR THOMPSON : 
 
 I watch with delight your work and wonder 
 at your accomplishment, when I see so solid 
 and extensive a product of your thought. 
 Choate often said, "After all, the only immor- 
 tality is a book." I have wished that I were 
 nearer to you in all your studies in the past few 
 years. My old regard for you follows you still 
 and I hail any glimpse of you in person or in 
 type. That amid your profession you have been 
 able to carry on your literary studies is a mar- 
 vel to me. Some time I hope we may clasp 
 hands again and go over the past. 
 
 W. T. HEWETT. 
 D. G. Thompson.
 
 146 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 CHICAGO, January 5, 1885. 
 DEAR MR. THOMPSON : 
 
 The two stately volumes have arrived and I 
 am very much obliged to you for them. I will 
 not of course pretend that I have already read 
 them, but I have looked into them here and there 
 enough to see the tremendous expanse of facts 
 and thought they cover and to see, too, that at 
 least in many parts I could become greatly in- 
 terested. 
 
 It is truly a magnum opus, and I congratu- 
 late you on its completion. 
 
 A. C. McCLURG.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 
 (1886.) 
 
 AMHERST COLLEGE, 
 AMHERST, MASS., November 11, 1887. 
 MY DEAR THOMPSON : 
 
 I have read your "Problem of Evil" carefully 
 from beginning to end . I need not say that it 
 has greatly interested me, for this could not be 
 otherwise, considering its theme and its author- 
 ship. You will not be surprised that I do not 
 like its main drift, and will not in the least sup- 
 pose that my dislike is occasioned by any refer- 
 ence in it to myself. The unnamed references to 
 myself, wherein I get glimpses of things which 
 used to come out in our discussions together, in 
 the recitation room and out of it, give me, as 
 you well know, only pleasure. And yet, after 
 all our discussions, I have failed to make you 
 apprehend my real position, and that of those 
 who agree generally with me. I wonder 
 whether there would be any dispute in the 
 world if men truly understood each other ? It 
 seems singular that Aristotle could not under-
 
 148 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 stand Plato, but I do not think he did ; and I 
 wonder why I have not made myself clear to 
 you, but I evidently have not. Hence I deeply 
 feel that I may wholly misapprehend you in my 
 objections to the teachings of your book, 
 though I am sure I am right in my confidence in 
 the purity and the uprightness of your desires 
 and purposes. 
 
 Before speaking of what seems to me the 
 radical error of the book, may I state a few 
 points as I jotted them down while I was read- 
 ing it. 
 
 p. 12. " Moral evil arises from the relations of sentient 
 beings to each other." 
 
 But what if there were only a solitary man 
 upon the globe, and he should give himself up 
 to unbridled lust, i.e., should allow himself to 
 be dominated wholly by his bodily appetites, as 
 they might crave for excessive gratification, 
 would there not be in this, aside from its phy- 
 sical consequences, a real moral evil ? 
 
 p. 15. " Evil, that which causes pain." 
 
 But suppose a man has undertaken to rob 
 me, but has been foiled ? No pain has come to 
 me, for I may not know it, and none to the
 
 THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 149 
 
 robber, except perhaps the pain of his disap- 
 pointment ; but is there no evil in his intention ? 
 
 p. 16. " Moral evil is pain caused by human volition to 
 cause pain." 
 
 But, again, the moral evil of the isolated 
 domination of sensual lust, what of it? Surely 
 this is evil, but where is there any volition to 
 cause pain thereby? 
 
 p. 17. " Not all pain," etc. 
 
 But what, then, do you mean by "unright- 
 eous dispositions and choices? " Have you not 
 slipped into your definition, by another word, 
 the very idea which is to be defined ? 
 
 p. 85. " Aim at the maximum of liberty." 
 
 But what is liberty, and what its exact dis- 
 tinction from license ? Is it not in the difference 
 between obedience to law and lawlessness ? 
 
 p. 91 . "A necessity of all social order is the preservation 
 of security to each individual." 
 
 But how gain this preservation without 
 law? This is implied even in the next para- 
 graph. 
 
 p. 94. As bearing upon this same point, note 
 on this page what is said about governmental 
 education.
 
 150 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 p. 101. You correctly state the importance 
 of the Christian doctrine of sin. 
 
 p. 109. " It is conceded by all," etc. 
 
 True ; but whence these ideals ? 
 
 p. 131. Does not Herbert Spencer's classifi- 
 cation of duties clash with your view of moral 
 evil, on page 12 ? 
 
 p. 137. An entire misconception of the 
 grounds on which laws against blasphemy are 
 to be enforced. 
 
 p. 138. In all that you are saying here, you 
 seem to ignore the point you correctly make on 
 p. 132, of the relation of doctrine to conduct. 
 
 p. 140. But where actually are the highest 
 developments of what you call altruistic char- 
 acter ? Are they not through Christian motives ? 
 p. 140, second paragraph. But you ignore 
 the actual origin of civil liberty, vide Hegel's 
 "Philosophic," der Geschichts, Introduction. 
 
 p. 144. Would it not have been better to ask 
 whether such a doctrine as you represent the 
 Trinity to be could have been held so long and 
 so earnestly by the Church, and might not this 
 have suggested the inquiry, whether you may 
 have misapprehended the doctrine ?
 
 THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 151 
 
 p. 193. "In order that a proposition be true it must con- 
 form to experience." 
 
 But how about mathematical propositions, 
 and how about belief in testimony ? 
 
 p. 204. What is a struldbrug? 
 
 p. 209. You repeatedly urge, as I am happy 
 to see, that the state is the organic unity of 
 mankind and that "the central principle of all 
 organic life is," etc. Must you not, therefore, 
 recognize that which is before the parts an ideal 
 factor determining how the parts shall stand 
 thus related ? But is there not then a reality 
 of existence to society before the individual? 
 vide Aristotle's "Politics," I. 
 
 p. 245. " Moral evil is the choices of individuals." 
 
 True, but at war with your general discus- 
 sion. 
 
 "Egoism in the individual character is the root of all 
 moral evil." 
 
 Undoubtedly, but, then, what becomes of your 
 view of the doctrine of sin ? 
 
 If you are not saying, in disgust, at this time, 
 that I have entirely misapprehended you, as 
 I am sure you fail to see what I have advo- 
 cated, and are willing that I should add a word
 
 152 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 further, let me say that the great trouble I have 
 with your book is that you constantly seem 
 to overlook the real elements of personality. 
 These elements are, I take it, two, and only 
 two, viz., self-consciousness and self-direction. 
 Both these are necessary to personality, and 
 neither of them could come from the imper- 
 sonal. The gap between the personal and the 
 non-personal still remains a chasm which no 
 evolutionary hypothesis has been able to bridge. 
 Note the attempts at this and the undistrib- 
 uted middle in the syllogism, involved in them 
 all, e.g., Mr. Spencer's. Neither the personal can 
 come from the not-personal, nor consciousness 
 from the unconscious, for the dictum, "ex nihilo 
 nihil fit," forbids. Our personality must have 
 had a personal source. The finite self-conscious- 
 ness must rest ultimately upon the absolute 
 self-consciousness. I can conceive of no bet- 
 ter expression for the sound, speculative view 
 than the Scripture statement that "God has 
 made man in His own image." But, if this be 
 so, then the finite personality can have a true 
 self-direction, and is, therefore, free, and, there- 
 fore, the question of freedom does still set itself
 
 THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 153 
 
 before our face and look us in the eye. But in 
 its freedom it may take what you call an ego- 
 istic, or, as I should prefer to say, a selfish 
 direction, or, as you term it, an altruistic, 
 which I should prefer to call an unselfish one. 
 But selfishness is not what you seem to con- 
 ceive it to be all along in your discussion, e. g., 
 p.lll. 
 
 It is not simply the self-consciousness or the 
 self-direction, or anything by which we simply 
 predicate individuality of a being, as the sun it- 
 self, the mountains themselves, etc. But it is 
 the seeking of a true good, not simply for, but 
 in the self. May I help my meaning here by a 
 phrase which the Germans so often use and say 
 that selfishness is not the "fiir sich seyn" but 
 the "in sich seyn?" 
 
 Now, my dear Thompson, you seem to me 
 constantly to ignore this great point. Your 
 whole discussion nowhere distinguishes between 
 these two. And yet this distinction is not only 
 important, it is all important to a discussion of 
 the Problem of Evil. With this distinction 
 clearly in mind, the question of sin and of 
 God's sovereignty have a solemn meaning more
 
 154 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 consonant with the deep seated sentiments of 
 mankind than with the strongly uttered senti- 
 ments of your book. 
 
 By and by we shall not differ, and, till then, 
 and ever, I am, very truly yours, 
 
 JULIUS H. SEELYE. 
 
 Daniel G. Thompson, Esq. 
 
 ORANGE, June 8. 
 DEAR MR. THOMPSON : 
 
 I have read your book with much pleasure. 
 * * * I cannot accept your doctrine of deter- 
 minism at all. You are splendidly right on 
 social questions. 
 
 Cordially yours, 
 
 THOMAS DAVIDSON.
 
 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENTS OF THE 
 
 HUMAN MIND. 
 
 (1888.) 
 
 10 WEST TENTH STREET, 
 
 April 4, 1888. 
 DEAR MR. THOMPSON : 
 
 * * * While I have not been able to give it 
 a careful reading, I have looked into it suffici- 
 ently to enable me to see what a valuable contri- 
 bution you have made to the religious thought 
 of the day. Your book cannot fail to impress 
 the reader with its broad and liberal senti- 
 ments, in which I am well convinced lies so 
 much of the hopes of the future for independence 
 of thought and action among mankind. 
 Most faithfully yours, 
 
 HENRY S. OAKLEY. 
 
 April 2, 1888. 
 MY DEAR MR. THOMPSON : 
 
 Your "Religious Sentiments of the Human 
 Mind" has interested me exceedingly more, if 
 anything, than did "The Problem of Evil." 
 Your treatment of the subject is thoughtful,
 
 156 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 both conservative and liberal in the truest sense 
 of those much abused words, and I find myself 
 in agreement -with you at almost every point. 
 
 I have criticised your definitions a little, but 
 could not conscientiously " pitch in" to the book 
 very severely. Indeed, your treatment is so 
 fair, moderate and candid, that I do not see 
 how those even who disagree with you can 
 possibly take offence at your positions. 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 LEWIS G. JANES. 
 
 FLATBUSH, L. I. 
 MY DEAR THOMPSON : 
 
 I have just received your book, "The Relig- 
 ious Sentiments," etc., for which accept my 
 many thanks. I have read it, for which I shall 
 probably receive yours. I read it in one session. 
 That will excite your surprise. 
 
 I believe I am nearly in sympathy with your 
 definition of religion. The relations spoken of do 
 not include any of the moral sentiments, which, 
 I believe, are exclusively the relations of man 
 to man and nothing else all of which, I believe, 
 however, are included in your definitions.
 
 RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 157 
 
 I took great pleasure in Chapter III., but 
 must insist that religion is egoistic and entirely 
 selfish ; every altruistic emotion belongs to the 
 social and moral ; therefore, religious sentiments 
 are social factors in just so far as they are non- 
 religious. 
 
 The teachings of religion are to do good for 
 God's sake, and for the sake of the personal 
 soul; its great reward is in another life, to 
 which morality makes no pretensions, nor does 
 it in any sense give recognition to any concep- 
 tion higher than humanity, or to any power 
 superior to society. 
 
 Morality makes the Man; Religion, the 
 Saint. 
 
 What do you mean in saying "Religion must 
 furnish the foundation principle of Ethics? " 
 
 The great mass of teachers, if I have learned 
 the lesson aright, make morality basic to relig- 
 ion. Is the moral sense of the dog based upon 
 religious sentiment ? 
 
 Lucretius says " Fear was the mother of Relig- 
 ion." 
 
 Hume says "Religion was evolved out of ig- 
 norance."
 
 158 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 I know of none more noted for religion and 
 bad morals than David, Lot and Solomon. 
 
 I might probably name a few modern exam- 
 ples, all of whom have gone to swell the aristoc- 
 racy of heaven. 
 
 The Buddhistic Nirvana, of which you speak (on 
 page 98), I have somewhere seen summarized 
 as "Nothing but Nothingness; " and an author 
 whom you delight to quote speaks of existence 
 in the same Nihilistic mood : 
 
 " A moment's halt, a momentary taste 
 Of Being, from the Will and the Waste, 
 And Lo ! the phantom caravan has reacht 
 The Nothing it set out from. Oh, make haste." 
 
 Were your book on review before me, I should 
 say that in Chapter XXXIII. you have too 
 much heaven and too little hell. The equipoise 
 is lost. Let's restore it by expunging both. 
 
 I really have no choice between the man 
 who avoids evil to gain heaven, and he who does 
 good to escape hell; each is equally culpable. 
 As Burns facetiously says : 
 
 " It 'a as it pleases best hissel', 
 Sends ane to heaven and ten to hell ; 
 'A for thy glory."
 
 RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 159 
 
 I cannot just here forego the pleasure of a 
 little quotation from the highly religious brother, 
 Dr. Watts, in one of those sublime little poems 
 on a kindred subject : 
 
 " Almighty vengeance, bow it burns, 
 How bright His fury glows; 
 Vast magazines of plagues and Storms 
 Lie treasured for his foes." 
 
 I agree, totally, with the unexpressed senti- 
 ment of the chapter: "That to believe such 
 things, is coercing the intellect to eat dirt." 
 
 My mood, to-night, is antagonistic, but with 
 your last chapter, " Religious Education," my 
 best feelings are entirely in accord. It is the most 
 delightful chapter of this rather fascinating 
 book. The topic is an interesting one, and it is 
 full of new methods and thought. Thompson, 
 I am glad you have written this book. True, I 
 have read it but loosely; shall read it again, 
 and if I reverse the gossipy judgments of this 
 unwise note, will so inform you. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 DAN M. TREDWELL. 
 March 29, 1888.
 
 160 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 AMHERST COLLEGE, 
 AMHERST, Mass., March 30, 1888. 
 MY DEAR FRIEND: 
 
 I have been lately reading James Martineau's 
 "Study of Religion," a truly notable book of 
 affluent scholarship, both acute and profound in 
 thought, and of a royal splendor in style, and 
 was just purposing a letter to ask you to read 
 it when your own book on the same theme was 
 brought me. Let me thank you for sending it to 
 me, while I again express the deep interest, what- 
 ever you do, will always have for me. In look- 
 ing it over cursorily, before giving it the careful 
 attention it demands, I am not at all displeased 
 perhaps, I ought not to be surprised, that you 
 again pounce upon me. But I wonder whether I 
 can be so far from apprehending your posi- 
 tion, as you seem to be from approaching mine. 
 On page 165 one finds "they " (i. e., I and those 
 believing with me) "would not favor a fair set- 
 ting forth of the arguments for and those 
 against the miracles accorded in the Gospel. 
 They would not allow Him (Jesus) to 
 be compared with Sakya-muni, as Caesar."
 
 RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 161 
 
 Why, my dear Thompson, this is not only 
 what we do allow, but the exact procedure 
 which we are all the while urging should be 
 taken. You surely have heard me do this very 
 thing a score of times. I am doing this so often, 
 and urge it so strongly, that I have some- 
 times almost wondered whether the frequency 
 of my iteration may not weaken its force. In 
 my "Lectures to Educated Hindus," a copy of 
 which I would gladly send you, if I have not 
 already done so, I say, page 29, "Christianity 
 is not only open for the examination of the 
 world, but it challenges the closest scrutiny. 
 Try me, it says, to all the opposing thoughts 
 and systems of men. Examine my claims in 
 whatever aspect and by whatever test you 
 please," etc. So far from not favoring "a fair 
 setting forth of the arguments for and those 
 against miracles, this is precisely what I at- 
 tempted to do in my Lecture on Miracles, and 
 whether I succeeded or not, the attempt was 
 fairly made, and I have never known its fairness 
 criticised. If in any point I have failed to state 
 in that Lecture, fairly and with sufficient full- 
 ness, the arguments against miracles, I should
 
 162 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 be most grateful to have it shown. Did I ever, 
 my dear friend whose presence in my class- 
 room I remember with constant joy did I ever 
 show myself afraid of free thought? Let me 
 quote one sentence from my Inaugural, on tak- 
 ing the Presidency of the College, which, if I 
 know myself, is as truly as any sentence the 
 keynote of all my teachings. 
 
 "Christian faith is not only not hostile to 
 free thought, but it finds its normal exercise 
 and expression in this very freedom." p. 32. 
 
 You criticise also my statement about the 
 historical accuracy of the Gospels, but surely 
 you know that whatever may be true of "Jour- 
 nals and Reviews," no scholar acquainted with 
 the recent progress in Biblical criticism now 
 doubts the general historical accuracy of the 
 New Testament. Strauss and Renan both 
 admit this. True, they still reject the miracu- 
 lous element, though Strauss is obliged to ad- 
 mit, in his "Neues Leben Jesu," that the disci- 
 ples must have believed in the resurrection of 
 their Lord from the dead, but they reject the 
 miraculous, not because the historical evidence 
 in its support is wanting, but because a
 
 RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 163 
 
 preconceived theory of theirs, about the " order 
 of nature," discards all historical evidence 
 that contradicts it, a procedure, I insist, 
 worthy of neither the scholar nor the philoso- 
 pher. 
 
 Will you forgive me for so long a letter ? Our 
 sentiments are, I am sure, akin, whatever our 
 thoughts may be. And thus I embrace you, 
 and am, ever, Most truly yours, 
 
 JULIUS H. SEELYE. 
 
 UNITED STATES LEGATION, 
 CONSTANTINOPLE, December 15, 1888. 
 MY DEAR THOMPSON: 
 
 I congratulate you on your election as presi- 
 dent of the Nineteenth Century Club. I don't 
 see how the club could have done better, in 
 view of the fact of the excellent manner you had 
 theretofore conducted its affairs as acting presi- 
 dent. I was very much interested by your 
 book on the "Religious Sentiments." The last 
 chapter is, by all odds, the ablest and most con- 
 vincing presentation of the question, "Religion 
 and the Schools," I have ever read, and I would
 
 164 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 be glad to see it appear in one of our best 
 magazines. Yours sincerely, 
 
 0. S. STRAUS. 
 
 PARK AVENUE HOTEL, April 23, 1888. 
 DEAR MR. THOMPSON : 
 
 I thank you for the copy of your important 
 work on the "Religious Sentiments." It is 
 more affirmative than I had expected, and 
 therefore very edifying. Yet I can't say that 
 I attach the supreme importance you ascribe to 
 the faith in immortality. I am always cautious 
 in drawing on the belief too largely for ethical 
 inspiration. Even if heaven is a fable, it is not 
 good to be a beast or a sybarite. Righteous- 
 ness is full of promise for the life that now is. 
 As for myself, if I can have faith in God, L e., in 
 the Beneficence of the Supreme Power, I am will- 
 ing to live or die, as He shall judge best. The 
 best people I have known, though believing in 
 the Hereafter, never seemed to me to live with 
 "eternity in view," but to do right, because 
 they had pure and loving hearts. Is it not 
 better to be worthy of immortality than to be 
 sure of it ?
 
 RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 165 
 
 That is what I preach always, though I cher- 
 ish and encourage the immortal hope, and ac- 
 count it an element in the religion of the Future. 
 
 Your Genesis of Trinitarianism seems to me 
 valuable, and all your criticisms of the clergy 
 are just. The assumption of authority is, to 
 some extent, however, a greatness thrust upon 
 us. The people want dogma, i. e., positive as- 
 sertion. Even in my own emancipated sect, 
 this want is felt. People want their preacher 
 to be cocksure. A calm, judicial frame of mind 
 is unfavorable to exhortation and ethical incite- 
 ment. So I have learned to look leniently on 
 the Pope's infallibility and all kindred preten- 
 sions on the part of my fellow successors to 
 the Apostles. (Am I not an Apostle? Am I 
 not free?) As Barnum said, "people want to be 
 humbugged," so every bishop knows that the 
 people insist upon authoritative guidance. It 
 takes courage for a priest to say, "ignoramus, 
 ignorabimus," and it is certain to lower him 
 in his disciples' eyes. Thanking you once more 
 for the valuable essay, 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 THEODORE C. WILLIAMS.
 
 166 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 626 CARLTON AVENUE, 
 BROOKLYN, N. Y., March 27, 1888. 
 * * * Differing with it here and there, I 
 have found it very interesting. It could not 
 have come more opportunely, seeing that I am 
 through the first of Martineau's two volumes, 
 ' ' A Study of Religion. ' ' Your definition of relig- 
 ion is much more to my mind, and I think likely 
 much of what follows will be so. Martineau's 
 is a very brilliant and fascinating book. 
 
 JOHN W. CHADWICK.
 
 SOCIAL PROGRESS. 
 
 25 WEST THIRTY-SEVENTH ST., Feb. 1. 
 DEAR MR. THOMPSON: 
 
 I have just finished reading " Social Progress, " 
 with much pleasure and profit. I am glad to 
 have you say a good word for our newspapers, 
 which really do often transcend the limits of 
 decency; but if it is for good, and keeps us in 
 the straight and narrow path of right, even if 
 that is through fear of them, it is all very well. 
 
 ANNE C. L. BOTTA. 
 
 MY DEAR MR. THOMPSON: 
 
 * * * I have already read several chap- 
 ters of "Social Progress " a second time, for I 
 found it last summer in the Authors Club li- 
 brary, and became much interested in the book. 
 I also dipped into your other books there, and 
 have promised myself the further pleasure of 
 reading them more. Your thoughts seem to 
 run a good deal in the same channel as my own, 
 but, while I have sauntered or skipped, you
 
 168 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 have brought a loving strength to the work, 
 and have accomplished an immense task. I am 
 much struck with your clearness, sincerity, 
 earnestness, and continuity of thought. Never- 
 theless, I cannot do you full justice, as I ought, 
 because I am so carried away by amazement 
 that, with the labors and exactions of profes- 
 sional practice, you could set free your mind to 
 roam over space and gather so much in a field 
 so unlike the "herbless granite" of the law. I 
 found the profession a jealous mistress, and for 
 many years dared to look only occasionally 
 into a book of literature, much less of meta- 
 physics or philosophy, mental or moral or even 
 social. I congratulate you upon a mastery of 
 mind I never was able in my own case to 
 possess. Sincerely yours, 
 
 ALBERT MATHEWS.
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 AMHERST COLLEGE, 
 AMHERST, Mass., Dec. 5, 1890. 
 MY DEAR FRIEND: 
 
 I must both thank you for sending me your 
 "Philosophy of Fiction," and congratulate you 
 on again producing a work indicative of your 
 literary skill and speculative force. I can easily 
 see its attractiveness, and shall at once give it 
 my attention. With constant affection, 
 Most truly yours, 
 
 JULIUS H. SEELYE. 
 DANIEL G. THOMPSON, Esq. 
 
 UNION CLUB, Dec. 3. 
 MY DEAR MR. THOMPSON: 
 
 I have read your thoughtful and lucid book 
 with great pleasure, and congratulate you most 
 sincerely on its authorship. Here and there you 
 seem to me almost too literal and charitable 
 but that may be only my own narrowness. As, 
 for instance, you speak of such a novel as
 
 170 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 ' ' Zanoni, ' ' -with a recognition of its sources of in- 
 terest being legitimate. To my mind the mere 
 supernatural, in fiction as in life, must wholly 
 pass away. The good and strong poetry in cer- 
 tain parts of " Macbeth" will, I should say, en- 
 dure; but I can't help thinking that all the 
 witch business must lapse into merited oblivion. 
 All the poetry with which Dante has enshrouded 
 it, I imagine, will not eventually save "The In- 
 ferno," and so on, ad absurdum, you may, 
 perhaps, declare it. But your book, with all 
 its care and thought and study cannot be too 
 highly praised. It is rare, indeed, to find a critic 
 nowadays of your blended kindliness and 
 acumen. 
 
 Believe me, hoping soon to see you, always 
 
 faithfully, 
 
 EDGAR FAWCETT. 
 
 27 WEST SEVENTY-FOURTH ST., 
 
 NEW YORK, Dec. 28, 1890. 
 MY DEAR THOMPSON; 
 
 This Sunday afternoon I spent most profit- 
 ably in finishing the "Philosophy of Fiction in
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 171 
 
 Literature." I will be entirely frank in express- 
 ing my opinion about this work, whether it be 
 of value or not, it shall be my opinion. The 
 book is good ; it is very good. It is naturally 
 written, plain, direct, not stilted. It is interest- 
 ing to three classes of persons, according to my 
 judgment: to the constructors of Fiction, to 
 the readers of Fiction, and to those who do 
 not read Fiction for the latter will learn why 
 they should read fiction, and what class of 
 fiction they can read with greatest profit. 
 
 The chapter I enjoyed the most was VI., 
 ' ' Realism and Idealism . " It is full of suggestion 
 and well digested thought. The chapter, "Art, 
 Morals and Science," is equally excellent, and 
 puts in clearly expressed language many rea- 
 sons that fiction has suggested in vague outline 
 to the thoughtful reader. 
 
 The book deserves to be, and I feel sure it will 
 be, used in our high institutions as a valuable 
 text-book for that important branch of litera- 
 ture, fiction, which occupies such a large field 
 in the reading world. 
 
 I congratulate the author of a "System of 
 Psychology " upon the excellent practical fruits
 
 172 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 his philosophy is bearing. Again thanking you 
 for your very valuable "Essay," which you in- 
 sist upon calling this book, I am, 
 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 OSCAR S. STRAUS. 
 
 CHICAGO, February 23, 1891. 
 DEAR MR. THOMPSON : 
 
 I am glad that your last volume is a success 
 from the publisher's point of view, which is often 
 of no small importance to the author as well. 
 
 I think it likely that your work from now on 
 will be your best. The facility with which you 
 write, and write well, on many subjects, tempts 
 you into many fields, and the result is that your 
 intellectual force is diffused over a large area. 
 It has occurred to me that you may yet con- 
 centrate your mind on some special subject as 
 you did so many years on psychology and 
 with your large knowledge and trained habits 
 of thought, produce the work on which your 
 reputation will chiefly rest. * * * I have 
 been the last year more and more interested in 
 the study of psychical phenomena, and more and
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 173 
 
 more I am constrained to the view that the en- 
 tire phenomenal world is but symbolical of what 
 in its essential nature is akin to mind. My in- 
 vestigations have impressed me with the signifi- 
 cance of what Spencer calls "the substance of 
 mind." Perhaps you, too, have looked into the 
 subject. If you have not, I assure you that 
 there is a field, the exploration of which is likely 
 to yield important results. 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 B. F. UNDERWOOD. 
 
 NEW YORK, November 28, 1890. 
 MY DEAR THOMPSON: 
 
 Let me hasten to thank you for the "Philos- 
 ophy of Fiction." I have not had time yet to 
 more than dip into it enough to see that I shall 
 read it with both pleasure and profit. 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 W. C. BROWNELL. 
 
 If Sociology ever becomes a science, it will 
 certainly have reason to complain if among its 
 text-books there is no "Thompson on Evi- 
 dence," I should say.
 
 174 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 159 S. OXFORD STREET, 
 BROOKLYN, November 28, 1890. 
 
 I am indebted to jour tidy book on Fiction 
 for a pleasant part of my Thanksgiving day. 
 I am much impressed with its profound discus- 
 sion of the elements of fiction. It is readable, 
 strong and courageous, and at times eloquent in 
 phrase. I very much appreciate your thoughtful 
 kindness in sending it to me. 
 
 Gratefully yours, 
 
 JOHN A. TAYLOR. 
 
 CHICAGO, February 9, 1891. 
 DEAR MR. THOMPSON : 
 
 I enclose herewith two notices of your last 
 work which I made, one for the Inter Ocean, 
 one of our leading dailies, and the other for the 
 ReHgio-Philosophical Journal. Both are inade- 
 quate, but they will do a little to call attention 
 to the book, perhaps, which I have read with 
 interest and profit. Your contributions to 
 philosophy and literature are most valuable 
 and entitle you to first rank among American
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 175 
 
 thinkers and writers. Too profound to be pop- 
 ular, your works are appreciated by the thought- 
 ful and discriminating, and by such will be held 
 in high estimation as they become known. 
 
 B. F. UNDERWOOD. 
 
 9 WEST THIRTY-FOURTH STREET. 
 
 December 26, 1890. 
 MY DEAR MR. THOMPSON : 
 
 Mrs. Clews and I desire to thank you for your 
 kindness in sending us your very interesting 
 book, "The Philosophy of Fiction in Litera- 
 ture." We have both found it most interesting. 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 HENRY CLEWS. 
 
 MADISON, Wis., October 24, 1891. 
 
 I have read already so much of the 
 "Philosophy of Fiction" that my obligation is 
 due not less for the pleasure the essay gives than 
 for the pleasure I derive from your kind remem- 
 brance. I think none more enjoy the sweet solace 
 of such studies, which employ and soothe the
 
 176 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 mind, than they -who are forced to mingle and 
 struggle with the passions that sway the ordi- 
 nary course of affairs in our profession and in 
 public life, and it gives me an added appreciation 
 of your excellence to witness your success in 
 their pursuit. 
 
 With sincere regards, 
 
 WILLIAM P. VILAS.
 
 POLITICS IN A DEMOCRACY. 
 (1893.) 
 
 U. S. SENATE CHAMBER, 
 WASHINGTON, Oct. 19, 1893. 
 MY DEAR MR. THOMPSON : 
 
 I know not how better to tell you my thanks 
 for the compliment you have so kindly bestowed 
 on me, than by confessing the sense of exquisite 
 pleasure with which I learn it. It gives me joy 
 to find my name on the dedicatory page of your 
 interesting and useful book, so as to share some- 
 what in the grateful esteem you win from intel- 
 ligent readers. And I feel the delightful emo- 
 tion, which your friendship stirs, and pride that 
 it is so testified to every one whose eye shall 
 fall upon it. I shall treasure it the more since it 
 gives expression to the thought I have always, 
 more or less, entertained on the subject, and to 
 the hopefulness which, after all, we may justly 
 support in the slow moving advancement of 
 mankind in self-government and development. 
 We need sometimes, while candidly recognizing 
 the difficulties, the wise and just strengthening
 
 178 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 of faith in the excellence as well as in the justice 
 of the Democratic principle. And I am glad to 
 derive help from your study of one of the most 
 trying forms of our experience with the optim- 
 istic resultant view. 
 
 With cordial regard and gratitude, I am sin- 
 cerely yours, 
 
 WILLIAM T. VILAS. 
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS, Jan. 12, 1894. 
 DEAR SIR: 
 
 Permit me to thank you for the gift of your 
 book, "Politics in a Democracy," which I am 
 perusing with much interest. Although you 
 purport in several chapters to state and set forth 
 the good side of what you call Government by 
 Syndicate, and in particular of the instance of 
 such government furnished by Tammany Hall 
 in New York City, you appear to me to pass, in 
 fact, a severe and quietly incisive condemnation 
 upon the methods and the character of that 
 government no less than upon the apathy of 
 the citizens who submit to it, and I confess that 
 so far from finding in your volume anything to
 
 POLITICS IN A DEMOCRACY. 179 
 
 lead me to withdraw or modify the view of 
 municipal government in the United States, pre- 
 sented in your book, your ingenious and pointed 
 remarks seem to me to approve that view, and 
 to confirm the conclusions at which I had ar- 
 rived. The elections November last in New York 
 and in the city of Brooklyn add an apt illustra- 
 tion to your remarks on the power of the inde- 
 pendent or mugwump vote. Again thanking 
 you, I am, dear sir, 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 J. BRYCE. 
 
 164 COLUMBIA HEIGHTS. 
 MY DEAR FRIEND: 
 
 I read your book with great interest, the first 
 day I had it, reading until late in the night. 
 
 I quite appreciate its sentiment, the more so 
 from a second reading of the last two chap- 
 ters. My mother having a complete history of 
 Tammany Hall, equal to some three hundred 
 and fifty printed pages, in manuscript, makes 
 me the more interested and acquainted with the 
 subject. Mrs. Blake has been unable to find a
 
 180 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 publisher because her book was not an attack 
 upon the Hall, the firm that encouraged her to 
 write it flinching from a work that was in any 
 
 way friendly to the wigwam There 
 
 never has been, and never will be, another such 
 a turnover in our lives, probably. You would 
 have voted as we did, I know, and been hugely 
 
 interested. 
 
 Sincerely, 
 
 SIDNEY V. LOWELL. 
 
 NEW YORK, Oct. 23, 1893. 
 MY DEAR MR. THOMPSON: 
 
 Ireceived "Politics in a Democracy," and I am 
 much obliged for the same. As soon as election 
 is over I will bring my mind, enlightened by the 
 experience to be acquired in the present cam- 
 paign, to bear upon the work, and from the 
 glance that I have taken at it, I think I shall be 
 much interested. I fancy, however, from my 
 slight examination, that it will not make you a 
 leader in "The Organization." 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 WILLIAM TRAVERS JEROME.
 
 POLITICS IN A DEMOCRACY. 181 
 
 172 CONGRESS ST., 
 BROOKLYN, Oct. 22, 1893. 
 DEAR MR. THOMPSON: 
 
 I thank you sincerely for "Politics in a Democ- 
 racy." It is admirably clear and compact -with 
 thought. You have lifted Tammany Hall into 
 an upper ether by your philosophy -where its 
 long stay would cause its principal members a 
 sort of asphyxia, but the instruction and light 
 to the rest of us are none the less. I diifer widely 
 from you both as to the place in political growth 
 of the Government by Syndicate, which you de- 
 scribe so finely and truly, and also as to the 
 particular merits and uses of Tammany Hall, 
 your chief illustration. But you have set me 
 
 a-thinking. 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 EDWARD M. SHEPARD. 
 
 121 EAST 18TH ST., 
 
 Oct. 17, 1893. 
 DEAR THOMPSON: 
 
 Thanks for your book, which I read straight 
 through last evening with both pleasure and 
 profit. It is a good book up to a certain point ; 
 
 24
 
 182 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 and it will do good because it will help to clear 
 up men's minds and make them see things as 
 they are. Its weak spot is that you have joined 
 to a most acute and interesting analysis of Gov- 
 ernment by Syndicate, a defence of our specific 
 governing syndicate. The general political spec- 
 ulation is injured by your apology for Tam- 
 many Hall as it now is. With much that you 
 say about Tammany, I am in hearty agreement, 
 but you understate the case against the pres- 
 ent syndicate probably in righteous reaction 
 against the Evening- Post's abuse. 
 Yours truly, 
 
 BRANDER MATTHEWS. 
 
 TRINITY CHURCH IN THE CITY OF BOSTON. 
 
 Oct. 18, 1893. 
 MY DEAR DAN: 
 
 Thanks for the book, which I have already 
 read, and with sustained interest. It is the 
 fairest, ablest and most lucid statement of the 
 nature and result of Tammany government I 
 have ever seen. For years I have believed in the 
 system and tried to point out that denunciation 
 should be leveled at men and not at the Hall,
 
 POLITICS IN A DEMOCRACY. 183 
 
 consequently I am glad to see my view set forth 
 with power. Boston needs a syndicate, and 
 because she has none we are plagued with costly 
 fires, high insurance rates, the trolley cars and 
 a big tax. 
 
 Contra, don't you think that you could re- 
 vise the last chapter in the direction of pruning. 
 Let Funk alone ; leave him out. 
 
 But you have written a big book. 
 Ever sincerely yours, 
 
 E. WINCHESTER DONALD. 
 
 GTH Av., 13TH AND 14TH STS., 
 
 N. Y., Oct. 27, 1893. 
 DEAR MR. THOMPSON : 
 
 * * * I have read your book with much 
 satisfaction. It is one of the fairest statements 
 of Tammany's virtues and vices I have yet seen 
 set forth, and as such is one of the best justifica- 
 tions for Tammany's existence. Although the 
 book treats of practical politics, the mind of the 
 psychological student is easily discernible and 
 adds to its charms. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 ISIDOR STRAUS.
 
 184 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 U. S. CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION, 
 WASHINGTON, D. C., 
 
 March 3, 1894. 
 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON, ESQ. : 
 
 My Dear Sir. I have just received a copy of 
 your book, which I had already read, my atten- 
 tion having been called to it by Mr. Brander 
 Matthews. I was greatly interested in it, and 
 there are many points which you make with 
 which I entirely agree, although there are cer- 
 tain others on which I should take issue. 
 Very cordially yours, 
 
 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 
 
 MUTUAL LIFE BUILDING, Nov. 2, 1893. 
 DEAR MR. THOMPSON: 
 
 I have read with very great interest your 
 "Politics in a Democracy," and beg to thank 
 you for your courtesy in sending me a copy, 
 and, at the same time, to congratulate you 
 upon the merit of the essay. 
 
 It is the most thoughtful and temperate thing 
 that I have read upon the subject.
 
 POLITICS IN A DEMOCRACY. 185 
 
 The people of New York City, and if not those 
 of the country at large, have been stimulated by 
 the Evening Post, the Times, and similar news- 
 papers, to believe that our whole system of 
 municipal government is irredeemably bad, and 
 all this class has received much encouragement 
 from Mr. Bryce, who simply followed in their 
 train. 
 
 It is high time that the subject be considered 
 by as thoughtful and less prejudiced minds, and 
 I am very glad that the discussion has been be- 
 gun by one so competent and fair-minded as 
 yourself. Faithfully yours, 
 
 H. D. HOTCHKISS. 
 
 NEW YORK CITY, Oct. 17, 1893. 
 MY DEAR D. G. T.: 
 
 I have received a copy of your new work, en- 
 titled "Politics in a Democracy," and after 
 carefully reading it, hasten to acknowledge to 
 you the pleasure I have received in its perusal. 
 I have smiled at that crazy brained zealot who 
 denounced the Nineteenth Centurv Club as a
 
 186 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 "theological cock-pit," and I have laughed at 
 the recovering blow which you have dealt him. 
 I have guffawed over the little spank which you 
 suggest should have been administered to the 
 too laudatory speaker, and I have noticed, with 
 satisfaction, what you say in regard to the 
 Constitutional Convention to assemble next 
 May. I think the book is opportune, written 
 from a right standpoint, and is bound to do a 
 great deal of good. It certainly will be the 
 means of instructing many intelligent democrats 
 living out of this city, and perhaps out of the 
 State, that Tammany Hall is not composed 
 wholly of "scalawags," pirates and blacklegs, 
 which is now apparently the popular belief. I 
 am, with great respect, very truly yours, 
 
 ELLIOT SANDFORD.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 "A First Book in Latin," 1872. 
 
 "A System of Psychology," 1884. 
 
 "The Problem of Evil," 1886. 
 
 "Religious Sentiments of the Human Mind," 
 
 1888. 
 
 "Social Progress," 1889. 
 
 "Philosophy of Fiction in Literature," 1889. 
 "Politics in a Democracy," 1893.
 
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