And though he met death with a smile, and said, "Tell my friends that I
went lovingly, trustfully, peacefully," yet it is true that he was cut
off in the midst of noble dreams of service he would still render
humanity. Some one has said that "aspiration, not achievement, is the
measure of human worth." If this be true, or partly true, we may not
pass in silence the unfulfilled ambitions of Starr King.

His first great dream looked toward a career in Boston. He would found a
lectureship, somewhat like, yet most unlike, that afterward conducted by
Joseph Cook. How grandly he would have interpreted from such a platform
the spiritual significance of modern science is made evident in those
great lectures, "Substance and Show," "Laws of Disorder," and in those
memorable sermons dealing with natural phenomena. All the progress of
more than half a century has not rendered them obsolete. They can still
be read with pleasure and profit.

King also planned, when leisure should be afforded him, a work in
philosophy. Something of permanent value to all thinkers and students.
One needs but to read King's lecture on "Socrates" to understand how
rich and valuable such a work would have been. Indeed, here are
paragraphs that could have been written only by one of philosophic mood
and habit of mind. How much of modern "New Thought Philosophy" is
expressed in the following:

"Few acknowledge that thoughts are as substantial as things, that a
feeling is as real as a paving stone, that the soul is a congeries of
actual forces as truly as the body is, that a moral principle is as
persistent and fatal a thing as a chemical agent, and that, in the deeps
of the mind and of society, laws are at work as constant and stern as