William Smith College - Pine Yearbook (Geneva, NY)

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of earthly life in its true perspective and regard death as a natural step in the process, even as birth is. Only then shall we see that nothing is really worth striving for in this Heeting phase of existence except the things of the spirit, which are eternal, the things that are summed up in those two words, which best describe the essential personality of men like Doctor Silver, intellect and character: those only leave their impress when we are gone, those only we can take with us when we go hence, the rest is dust and ashes, the dream of a shadow. The pathos of this pitiful little life of ours disappears when viewed against the vast background of eternity. It is as Shelley, true Platonist that he was, said in what is perhaps the finest simile in English poetry: 'The one remains, the many change and pass: Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly, Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity, Until Death trarnples it to fragments' 35

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if D D , A I l ' man to fear, that the possibilities of life here and hereafter in beauty and in service are infinite' Whatever his faith, at any rate Doctor Silver always seemed to me the truest Stoic that I have known, whether or not he was a con- scious follower of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus. And next to being a good Christian, far better than being a poor Christian, it is to be a good Stoic,-no easy task for the human spirit, imprisoned as it is in this poor body with its weaknesses, its pangs and fears, its needs, and imperious desires. Much of the best that is in Christian- ity has come to us from the Stoics, who indeed carried moral philoso- phy and purely natural religion as far as they could go, till they were kindled into emotion and vital spiritual power by the transcendant light shed upon them by that Teacher who truly was of God and spake as man never spake. Death has come very close to us all, and no philosophy of life can be worth much that does not take account of death as well. It is not a morbid View that I would urge upon you: live your lives as fully and largely and joyously as you can, getting all you can out of the infinitely varied spectacle of this rich world in which we live for so brief a space at most, exerting every power to the utmost and missing no happiness or profit that life can bring, but do not neglect to look at life also under the aspect of eternity- sub specie aeternitatis, in Spinoza's memorable phrase. Those eternal aspects we End in the outer universe with its indestructible matter and its inexhaustible beauty ever combining in infinite variations and in that inner cosmos of the human soul, with its infinite yearnings, its hardly yet explored capacities for beauty and goodness and power-those two things, the starry heaven above and the moral law within, which so impressed the mind of Aristotle, greatest of ancient philosophers, as they did that of Kant, the greatest of the moderns. Only when we look on life as an infinite process, and on all lives as emanating from the infinite Source of Life and partaking in greater or less degree of its very nature, ever growing in its quest .of beauty and goodness and truth upward toward the Divine, only then shall we see this short stretch 84

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Faculty MILTON HAIGIIT TURK, A.B., A.M., Ph.D. Librarian, Horace White Professor of English Language and Literature. A.B. Columbia, 18863 A.M., Ph.D., University of Lcipsic, 1889. CID B K. Student in Universities of Strasburg, Berlin, and Leipsic, 1886-89. Adjunct Professor of Rhetoric and English, Hobart 1891, Secretary of the Faculty, 1890-07. Registrar, 1903-07. Author of The Legal Code of Alfred the Great, edited with introduction, 18891 Syllabus of English Literature, 1893. De Quincey's Flight of a Tartar Tribe, edited 18973 Selections from De Quin- cey, 1902, and The English Mail Coach and joan of Arc, 19053 Member of Modern Language Association3 traveled in Europe, I9I2-I3. Dean of William Smith, 1908-15. JOSEPH HETHERINGTON NICDANIELS, A.B. A.M., LL.D., Professor Emeritus of Greek Lan- guage and Literature. A.B. Cwith first honorsl Harvard, 18613 A.M., 1870. 41 B K. Instructor in Lowell High School, 1862-68. Professor of Greek Language and Literature, Hobart, 1868. Member of Institute of 1770, Rumford Society. Traveled in Europe, I872Q traveled in Greece, 18923 traveled in Europe, 1907, 1911. Professor Emeritus, 1911. LL.D., Hobart, 1911. 86