Omaha daily bee., 1912-08-27
The Use of a Great Man
BY GARRETT p. ,sERVIss.

! A grand funeral was given in Paris
| a couple of weeks ago to Henri Poin-
care, of whom, probably. many readers
of these lines have never heard. The
procession to the grave was imposing.
There marched, bare headed, through the
streets, between sidewalks crowded with
spectators, most of whom respectfully
removed their hats. a long double line of
the most distinguished living Frenchmen.
| When the grave was reached impressive
discourses were pronounced by M. Guist
hau, who spoke for the government and
the university; by M. Claretie, who rep
resented the famous Academic Fran
caise; by M. Painleve, who was the
mouthpiece of the Academy of Sciences,
and by many others whose names are
! better known to the public than was that
of the subject of their discourse.
All the newspapers were filled with
praise of the dead man, and all the il
lustrated journals printed portraits Of
him. Everybody was assured, and the
assurance was repeated from mouth to
mouth that France had lost one of her
greatest lights whose renown would IL
| lustrate the pages of it's history. Every
| body felt proud because his country had
produced so mighty a genius.
! But singular fact soon became evi-
dent-viz, that among the hundreds of
| thousands who repeated the praise of this
! immense genius hardly any one had a
! definite idea of what he was or Of what
he had done. They only knew that some
how he had been a great man.
During his lifetime it was said that
there were only two or three men in all
| Europe who could comprehend him.
| 1t Is almost certain that among those
who pronounced eulogiums at his tomb
there was none who could follow his work
with complete understanding. Most of
them did not know even the A-B-C of it.
| For Henri Poincare was a very great
mathematician, perhaps, the greatest
since Laplace and Lagrange, whom Ma
poleon, with his vast practical genius,
could not understand. For most people
mathematics, in its. higher forms, is a
closed book. ...
Naturally, then, after the first sensa-
4
ton caused by the departure of this great
genius had died away the question began
to be asked: What was he good for after
an?'
| That question has been asked, and
rather indefinitely answered, in many
newspapers. 1t cannot be answered by
giving a list of his 1,5OO works, for even
the most popular of them, like the book
on Science and Hypothesis" are full of
things which only the expert can read
| understandingly, while most of them are
addressed to the elite of science, the mar
row inner circle, to enter which requires
extraordinary talent and years Of appli-
cation.
But it does not follow that some answer
cannot be given. The best answer is two
fold. In the first place, one great use of
such a man as Poincare is the stimula-
ton which he imparts to the average
human being. He awakes the ambition
Of the race by showing OF what 1t is
capable. He is the man on the top Of
the apparently inaccessible mountain, who
| by his mere presence there, shows to
others the possibility Of ascending it. He
is like the late Edward Whymper waving
his cap from the summit of the terrible
MatteIhorn. Anybody with good wind
and strong muscles can ascend the Mat
terhorn now, because the way is known.