ASPR Journal, V14 - Iapsop.com

508 Jourual of the American Society for Psychical Research.
terests of the human soul. If ever there was a consecrated spirit
it was Hyslop. I will not dwell on the personal sense of loss
which I, in common with others who were privileged to share his
friendship, feel and shall continue to feel as the years pass. In
spite of a certain dryness of manner, he had a wann heart and
though a champion of science, took a large and human view of life
as in the main an opportunity of loving and serving our fellows.
My purpose is to emphasize some of the elements of his character
which especially impressed me.
Let me put first and foremost his love of truth. Of the truth
he was supremely careful, of all else supremely careless. Indeed
it would be no exaggeration to say that he was a truth-intoxicated
man. \Vhen this interest was at stake he would tolerate no compromise,
and many of his jibes at "respectability," "popularity"
and " shuffling in a double sense," sprang from his profound
reverence for truth and fact and not at all from any irritability
of temper, as some of his critics imagined. When a particularly
bad case of pandering to popular sentiment would happen to be
the subject of conversation, he would say, "Well, well, poor fellow,
we must not be too hard upon him. He has got to earn his
bread and butter."
Just because of his whole-hearted surrender to this ideal of
truth he was the most honest and the most fearless of men.
\Vhat the Regent Murray said by the grave of John Knox was
said appropriately and truly in the presence of the mortal remains
of our friend-" Here lies a man that never feared the face of
man." He had his full share of the obloquy and contempt and
intellectual snobbery wherewith the world visits those who break
with its traditions and blaze a path for the hosts that come behind.
But none of these things moved him. He had seen the heavenly
vision and the hostility of the world, now honest·and stupid, now
dishonest and clever, was to him a thing of naught. To speak
with him, to come even for a space into the atmosphere he
breathed, was of itself a moral tonic and revived one's faith in
the great realities of the spiritual world. Though much of his
life was spent in ·the defence of his opinions and therefore in a
world of contention and dispute, he was not a born controversial·
ist. He had no love of fighting for its own sake, nor had he quite
the patience necessary for the glad toleration of fools. He had
Digitized by Goog I e