III - JAMES DAVID FORBES (1874)

Summary

The incidental passage in Fors, hastily written, on a contemptible issue, does not in the least indicate my sense of the real position of James Forbes among the men of his day. I have asked his son's permission to add a few words expressive of my deeper feelings.

For indeed it seems to me that all these questions as to priority of ideas or observations are beneath debate among noble persons. What a man like Forbes first noticed, or demonstrated, is of no real moment to his memory. What he was, and how he taught, is of consummate moment. The actuality of his personal power, the sincerity and wisdom of his constant teaching, need no applause from the love they justly gained, and can sustain no diminution from hostility; for their proper honour is in their usefulness. To a man of no essential power, the accident of a discovery is apotheosis; to him, the former knowledge of all the sages of earth is as though it were not; he calls the ants of his own generation round him, to observe how he flourishes in his tiny forceps the grain of sand he has imposed upon Pelion. But from all such vindication of the claims of Forbes to mere discovery, I, his friend, would, for my own part, proudly abstain. I do not in the slightest degree care whether he was the first to see this, or the first to say that, or how many common persons had seen or said as much before.