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Claude T. Barnes, Utah Naturalist
Claude T. Barnes, Utah Naturalist
BY DAVIS BITTON
"More than any other landscape I love the grandeur and beauty of the mountains .... they have some melancholy phases . . . but these are rare, transient or but the reflection of mood." (Wasatch Autumn, October 24.)
Lake Mary near Brighton, USHS collections.
WHEN CLAUDE T. BARNES DIED IN 1968, he was identified as a lawyer, businessman, and naturalist. He might also have been counted as a banker, scientific farmer, and politician. And having written some fourteen books and 118 articles he was certainly one of Utah's most published authors. Of all these labels the one he would have preferred is that of naturalist. For sixty years he observed the birds, mammals, trees and flowers, mountains and canyons, clouds and streams of his native Utah. For Claude Barnes there was beauty all around. And not content to keep his appreciation to himself, he wrote about what he saw. In the tradition of Henry David Thoreau and John Muir and Aldo Leopold he used words not only to describe but also to praise the marvels of nature. His collected writings, a paean to the beauties of Utah, frequently contain reflections about life and its meaning. The time is ripe for a fresh appreciation of this Utah naturalist.
On February 15, 1884, he was born at Kaysville, the eighth child of the third wife of John R. Barnes. An older brother, then a missionary in England, proposed that the infant be named Joseph Teancum Barnes after Joseph Smith and Teancum, a great warrior in the Book of Mormon. His mother, Emily Stewart Barnes, had a mind of her own, however. Having just read Bulwer-Lytton's play The Lady of Lyons, whose hero was Claude Melnotte, she decided on the name of Claude Teancum Barnes. Later, as an adult, Barnes wrote, "It being the purpose of a name to designate exclusively, it is thought that the name Claude Teancum Barnes is unique." More than his name was unique about Claude Teancum Barnes.
The childhood of Claude was unexceptional. He went to school, won prizes, played games, and worked. Every day he milked three cows, pulled a wagon carrying the milk for three miles to the creamery, and then returned to breakfast before going to school. He made some spending money by carrying messages to people in the Kaysville area to come to the Barnes store to respond to telephone calls. Telephones were obviously scarce, automobiles yet unknown. It was a bucolic if strenuous atmosphere. In one of his later writings he even recalls the outdoor shanty of his childhood as a place of "spider, bee and ineffable contemplation."
By any standards his parents were impressive people. John R. Barnes was a figure of the second rank, the kind who made up the bone and sinew of territorial Utah. An immigrant who had been converted to Mormonism in England, the elder Barnes settled in Kaysville and there demonstrated his business acumen. Over fifty when Claude was born, John R. Barnes appeared distant and aloof to the boy. But Claude could not help but respect the integrity of his father, whom he described as "stern but true; broad in cares, but strict, frank, staunch, clean, fair, plain, bright, safe, and well tried." His mother was perhaps even more formidable. Wife number three in a polygamous union at the time of Claude's birth, Emily had eight children. When the first wife died, the second, who had only one child, unselfishly stepped aside and allowed Claude's mother, Emily Stewart Barnes, to assume the position of honor as legal wife. Renowned as a cook and hostess at whose table many of the leaders of the church sat as guests, Emily was a woman of many parts who could sew and make home remedies as well as appreciate the things of the mind. "What a woman!" Claude later exclaimed in the tribute he wrote to her.
As a teenager Claude first took an interest in politics and law. He attended a rally at which Congressman William H. King was the speaker. The next day Claude went home and "on a chair before his mother's wash tub imitated King; and then and there decided to be a lawyer."
Between 1899 and 1902, from ages fifteen to eighteen, Claude Barnes was a student at the University of Utah. One clue that it was still essentially a high school by later standards is the fact that just a year before his admission Claude had graduated from the eighth grade in Kaysville. His interest in politics and public affairs was clearly apparent. He had heard William Jennings Bryan speak at the Salt Palace during the 1898 campaign. As a new university student of fifteen Claude gave a political speech before 150 students. He participated in the student legislative assembly and in debate, once debating against Elbert D. Thomas, later U.S. senator from Utah. Although still in his teens, Claude Barnes was considered an eloquent speaker who could talk intelligently on public issues.
In 1902 at the age of eighteen Claude was called to serve as a missionary in England. Assigned to the west side of London he found time for what he later called "considerable reading and study at the British Museum and South Kensington Museum." The latter institution had displays of plants and animals, perhaps an early stimulus to his interest in such things. Yet, he did not slacken in his preaching of Mormonism. As he later immodestly put it, "In the two years that he was there he held more street meetings than any other Mormon missionary before or since in any part of the world; as high as 80 per month." One would have to admit that eighty street meetings in a month represented genuine exertion and commitment. And those familiar with the heckling custom in London's Hyde Park will appreciate Barnes's statement that it was his experience holding missionary street meetings that aided him in public speaking "ever afterward; for he could always get and hold a crowd."
One other thing he found time to do while a missionary in England was write articles for the Millennial Star, the official mission periodical. The titles indicate a theological and promotional interest: "The Power of Example," "Why Mormonism Grows," "The Personality of the Holy Ghost," and "Repentance." In a 1903 article on "Knowledge from God or Knowledge from Reason," the nineteen-year-old missionary gave a safe enough answer: only revelation can give the highest kind of knowledge. But it is perhaps significant that at this young age he was wrestling with such a ponderous question. After traveling in France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Germany, and Belgium, Claude returned to Utah in 1905.
Back home he attended the University of Utah in the spring, again participating in debate. It would have been during these spring months, one assumes, that he rekindled an old acquaintance. Annie Elizabeth Knowlton was twenty-two years old and according to her husband's later fond recollections "was so beautiful she was probably unexcelled in that respect." He was probably right, for she had won first prize for beauty at the Utah State Fair, and one can still admire her photograph for verification.
In the fall of 1905, leaving his bride behind, Claude Barnes struck out for the University of Chicago Law School. His earlier decision to become a lawyer was still in force. What drew him to Chicago during that school year is not known. He must have been lonely in his new environment, longing for his wife and loved ones back in Utah. He found time for much reading and browsing in the library. One day in the medical library he happened upon North American Land Birds by Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway. "It was," he later wrote, "my initiation into the delightful field of ornithology, and Mr. Ridgway became my friend and correspondent." Given the direction that his life took later on, this event almost appears to have the same significance for Claude Barnes as the famous occasion when Edward Gibbon sat on the steps of the capitol in Rome and began the chain of thoughts that led him to write The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
But Barnes was not ready to plunge into the life of a naturalist. In the summer of 1906 he returned to Utah and, this time taking Annie with him, then went to the University of Michigan to complete work on his law degree. It is tempting to see that year at Ann Arbor as crucial in weaning him from his Mormon faith, for he did become affiliated with the Masonic Lodge there and with a brotherhood called the Woodmen of the World. It is clear from the four articles he published in the Improvement Era in 1907, two of them written at Ann Arbor, that he was acquainted with the writings of Ernst Haeckel, the German Darwinist whose The Riddle of the Universe was a mechanistic form of monism that seemed at the time to represent a major challenge to the Christian faith. But Barnes referred to it only to refute it. Ethical societies are not sufficient in promoting moral behavior, he argued, citing as evidence the favorable crime and divorce statistics from Utah at that time. "If a Latter-day Saint, trust not him who has forsaken your ranks," he wrote. In "The Unconscious Illapse," Barnes took up an old line of reasoning to point out how several Christian spokesmen were coming closer to the Mormon position. He was in his way a defender of the Mormon faith.
Back in Utah with his wife by the summer of 1907, Barnes did not immediately begin the practice of law. Instead, he went to work for the Deseret News for a half-dozen years. In December 1907 his wife gave birth to a son, Stuart Knowlton Barnes, and three years later came a daughter, Kathleen Louise. These were the only two children born to this marriage. Among the articles he wrote as a newspaper reporter, of most interest, in view of his later development as a naturalist, are two that appeared in the Deseret News in 1908. In July, expressing his new interest in ornithology, he published "A Plea for Our Birds." In November came an essay entitled "Typical Early November Day." Here is a sample:
Already, at twenty-four, Claude Barnes was flexing his verbal wings as a writer about nature. The personal touch, the willingness to talk about his own observations, the undisguised relish for the beauty, the passion for specific colors — all continue in his later writings.
Life must have seemed good to Barnes during those years. A handsome young man with an attractive wife and two promising children, scion of a respected family on the Utah scene, recognized as an effective public speaker, and becoming known as a writer about the natural beauties of Utah, he would not have found life dull or uninteresting. If the postponement of practicing law was frustrating to him, that ended in 1913. That same year he was elected to the state legislature, where he served for two years. His writings about nature did not stop with the two articles already mentioned. He began a series on Utah birds for the Improvement Era and a series on mammals, fish, and even insects that appeared regularly in the Juvenile Instructor. By 1913 and 1914, the years he was serving in the legislature, he was ready for the big time, so to speak. Collaborating with J. H. Paul, an English professor at the University of Utah, Barnes published four books in two years: Farm Friends and Spring Flowers; Forest Groves and Canyon Streams; Farm Foes and Bird Helpers; and Western Natural Resources. Not surprisingly he was included in the 1914 publication Men of Affairs in the State of Utah, where he is described as "endowed with a keen mentality and with broad and liberal views." "Few members of the Utah bar are more widely known throughout Utah," said the article, "than Claude Teancum Barnes."
In 1913 Barnes published in the Improvement Era an article entitled "Dryden on Salvation for the Dead." Mainly the reprinting of a long passage from Dryden's Religio Laid, the' article included an introduction by Barnes in which it is clear that he loved to read not only Dryden but also Isaac Walton, Thomas Browne, Joseph Addison, and Henry Fielding. Although a seventeenth-century writer like Dryden could not be expected to understand things fully "without the illuminating influence of revelation," Barnes argued, he came close to expressing the Mormon approach to salvation. Barnes was still a defender of the faith.
For the two decades stretching from about 1913 to the early 1930s Barnes continued to write about nature. The Juvenile Instructor and Improvement Era were his main outlets but he branched out to publish in Outer's Book, St. Nicholas, Nature Magazine, and the Rocky Mountain Sportsman. In 1922 he published Mammals of Utah, which appeared in a revised and expanded edition in 1927 under the title Utah Mammals. Evincing an interest that was more than casual, he joined such organizations as the American Society of Mammalogists, the Society for the Study of Evolution, the American Ornithologists Union, the London Zoological Society, the Philosophical Society of England, the Eugene Field Society, the Society of Psychical Research of London, the Cooper Ornithological Club, the Ecological Society of America, the Biology Society of Washington, the Western Society of Naturalists, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. On the local level he was the first president of the Utah Audubon Society.
But there was also taking place in his life during these years a kind of shrinkage or narrowing down. In 1919 his father died, with an address written by himself read at his own funeral. Claude never forgot this experience. In 1921, after just sixteen years of marriage, his wife Annie died, leaving him with a fourteen-year-old son and eleven-year-old daughter to raise by himself. In 1929 Stuart married and not long afterward Kathleen followed suit; both children lived in the East and apparently had nothing further to do with their Latter-day Saint heritage. Claude seems to have maintained a close relationship with his mother. She was a widow and Claude, after 1921, was a widower, and by 1930 lived alone. In long talks with his mother, he gathered information for his own use and also encouraged her to write down as much as she could remember about her pioneer experiences. In 1932 when she died, his life suffered a severe contraction.
There was a narrowing also in the alienation of Barnes from his church. His children drifted from the faith and, not to imply any causal connection, he at least stopped attending meetings. This may not be surprising, for his earlier reading had led him to question and to probe. It takes little imagination to believe that he may have encountered Mormons who were unreceptive to the kind of comments he would make. On the other hand, he continued to publish in church magazines and to make some financial contributions. He did not launch any kind of crusade against Mormonism; there is not a single article or book that is intended as a frontal attack on the religion. He was still his parents' child and in the 1950s when he wrote separate small biographies of his father and his mother, it is obvious that he still admired their faith and commitment. Finally, he continued to think about immortality, about a continuation of life after death.
It must be remembered, of course, that the vocational center of Claude Barnes's life was law, which he continued to practice through the years. He must have been considered a successful lawyer, for in 1946 he was chosen to represent a group of polygamists before the U.S. Supreme Court. Ever the scholar, he did research on and published The White Slave Act: History and Analysis of Its Words "Other Immoral Purposes" which is still considered a standard work of reference on this topic. Along with law, at least since the death of his father in 1919, Claude spent some of his time in management of the John R. Barnes Company farms. This was no small operation. Consisting of 600 acres, the Barnes farm was said to produce "crops so great that if they were loaded on wagons, a ton to the wagon, the wagon train would reach from Salt Lake to Ogden." Claude was proud to report that only one or maybe two years ended without the farm showing a profit. Finally, to keep his mind alive and his interest whetted, there was politics. When he was a very young man, he was able to get Utah's congressman to send him the Congressional Record, which must have kept him informed on public issues for many years. After his service in the state legislature in 1913 and 1914 he may well have participated in party conventions as a delegate and, as an effective speaker, may have played some role in the campaigns. In any event, by 1938 he was ready for the larger stage. He filed as a primary candidate for U.S. Senate on the Republican ticket. It was the first year that Utahns voted directly in a primary rather than choosing candidates in conventions. Barnes was defeated by Brigham Young University President Franklin S. Harris, who went on to be defeated by Democrat Elbert D. Thomas. For the next six years Barnes was a member of the Republican National Committee.
So it would be misleading to think of Claude Barnes as going into a shell. Yet, when the floodlights were turned out, when the campaigns were over, when he went home after work each day, what did he do? It is on this front, occupied formerly by family and church, that his love of nature moved in to provide activity and aesthetic stimulation. The return to Utah way back in 1907 may have seen the start of his nature hikes, for Barnes was then an enthusiastic new ornithologist. He often found time to get into the out-of-doors all during the 1910s and 1920s. Then, after the death of his parents and his wife and the departure from home of his children, after about 1930 or so, the nature walks must have provided solace and enjoyment. In 1934 a newspaper reporter wrote:
It was these individual excursions, day after day, month after month, that led to the publications that raised him from a journalist, someone who wrote articles about nature, to a naturalist in the tradition of Thoreau.
The writings of Claude Barnes fall into several different categories. They include the legal treatise written in 1946 and his brief for the Supreme Court, not to mention the many similar documents prepared for his private law practice. Then there are the theological and apologetic articles that appeared in church magazines. Two biographies deal with his mother and father. At least one historical novel, apparently never published, was written. And there is a volume of moral essays. In all of these, especially the biographies, are found passages of interest to the student of Barnes as a naturalist. But it is his writings specifically on nature that made up the bulk of his literary output. It is convenient to divide them into three groups, the first of which includes articles and books primarily factual and descriptive — the long series in the magazines dealing with specific birds and animals and sites, the textbooks, and his study of the mountain lion. If he had stopped with those, if his life had ended about the time of its great contraction in the early 1930s, he would have still accumulated a considerable bibliography, enough to establish him as an important figure among those promoting knowledge and appreciation of Utah's natural surroundings. But he did not stop there. Continuing to do some articles in the pattern of the past, he moved out into a new domain in 1940 with The Wending Year, his book of poetry. Not a major poetic achievement, The Wending Year contains at least one stanza and sometimes several stanzas for each of the 365 days of the year. It is too monotonous, too sing-song, too predictable in its flat-footed scheme and the steady march of its iambic pentameter rhythm. Triteness and sentimentality are found on every page. Yet, it is an ambitious effort — 116 pages of poetic statement — and it has its moments. Here is his stanza for October 7:
Above all The Wending Year is a catalogue of specific observations. The natural setting — flower, bird, tree, and cloud — is often accompanied by a moral reflection. This work of poetry represents the second category of his nature writings.
Then, after the war, during the closing decade of his life, he reached the high point of his achievement as a literary naturalist with his four little volumes on the seasons: The Natural History of a Wasatch Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring. Perhaps recognizing his limitations, he abandoned poetry and returned to prose. Drawing from the accumulated files of years and years of nature hikes, he had specific notes for each day of the year. In prose form, allowing himself no more than one page of print for each day, he produced descriptions and moralistic reflections. They are personal and charming. In them (and to a certain extent in all of Barnes's nature writings) we find precision, concern for ecology, empathy, and wonder.
As an observer of the natural world Barnes early recognized the importance of precision. An appreciation for the shades of meanings of different words may have developed independently, for he had a wellthumbed and personally annotated copy of Roget's Thesaurus? But especially when writing of the plant and animal kingdoms he wanted to be clearly understood. For this reason he scrupulously used the Latin terms within parentheses. That, of course, can be a stumbling block to ease of reading. In his biographies the usage sometimes seems stilted: "The desert jack rabbit (Lepus californicus deserticola) was — and still is — common in that vicinity; and in the foothills the mule deer {Odocoileus hemionus hemionus) was fairly plentiful. . . . The cottontail (Sylvilagus nuttalli grangeri), which lived in the labyrinthine shrubbery of every creekside, was an especially delicious tid bit." But at the very least such a passage shows that the writer was careful in his distinctions and knew what he was writing about.
Barnes had a strong desire to report on the sounds made by the animals, especially birds. For this he developed onomatopes, words that came as close as he could make them to the actual calls. "The other jays approach, and there is a medley of sound," he wrote. "The loudest is a raspy 'chaa, chaa, chaa, chaa, chaa,' the 'chaa' being repeated usually five times but sometimes as much as ten. . . . Then several of the birds give vent to a long chutter, somewhat like that of squirrels but resembling the clicking of a large fishing reel." Barnes is trying valiantly to give an exact idea of the sound. On another occasion he explained:
Those who use Barnes's descriptions as a guide to their own bird watching would probably agree that an approximation is better than nothing. At least, such eminent ornithologists as Roger Tory Peterson made the same effort in their classic descriptions.
Another area in which Barnes was not at all satisfied with the rough language of everyday usage was color. In a 1948 article published in the Journal of Mammalogy (later reprinted in The Natural History of aWasatch Autumn) he explains that as a student he came across North American Land Birds. This introduced him to ornithology, and he became a friend and correspondent of one of the authors, Robert Ridgway. Ridgway's book Color Standards and Color Nomenclature became Barnes's companion. "I have for many years given the book scrupulous attention," he wrote, "even inclosing it in a cotton bag when I took itafield and begrudging its exposure to sunshine lest its historic color cards fade." Later he obtained A Dictionary of Color by Maerz and Paul but was frustrated to find that its color designations were by letter and number rather than by words. The summit was reached, as far as Barnes was concerned, when he became a member of the Royal Horticultural Society and discovered the great color chart produced under the direction of Robert F. Wilson. With this background one can appreciate more fully the care that went into Barnes's references to a maple tree of TaMing yellow with darker tints of mirabelle and saffron, the acajou red of a small weed growing in the Farmington Bay, skies of light Alice blue, and mountains of mikado brown with lower hills of light cinnamon drab. Perhaps unaware of the color charts just mentioned, a local writer in 1934 wrote that Barnes had obtained charts from paint stores and "assembled facilities for the identification of some 1,530 colors, which is getting down to fine shades."
Barnes saw some threat to his beloved Wasatch Front. He noticed that all the larger streams were muddy, which he attributed to overgrazing and fires that had allowed every rain to carry off soil from the hillsides. He advocated forest and wildlife management. He was not a great hunter, saying on one occasion: "Since the naturalist never desires to kill, except to supply food for his larder or specimens for his scientific collection, it is understandable that any act in violation of that rule causes repentant regret. It is little wonder that he should not forgive in himself or others- any act that is thoughtless enough to be wanton." He was also aware of the interconnections between the various life forms — Darwin's "tangled bank." He was not a modern ecologist, but his concerns, like those of Gifford Pinchot, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold, adumbrated the ecology movement of the 1960s.
Barnes felt empathy for the various creatures he observed. He tried in imagination to "enter into minds, experiences and understandings of birds and mammals." This is not the attitude of academic zoologists, but it is not unusual among naturalists. Barnes wrote:
On one occasion he wrote that all nature, like man, lived that it might have joy. Insects could be happy, Barnes thought, as could birds. Observing a bird feeding on a cone, he wrote, "What a happy life in a land of plenty — insects in summer, nuts in winter." On other occasions he realized that there might be problems with such projection of human values. Speaking of the water ouzel, he wrote:
Claude Barnes had an admirable capacity for wonder. As long as he lived, he never became blase about the mountains, canyons, and streams he visited. Conceding that he had identified the species and subspecies of animal and botanical life "with meticulous care," he said that his attitude had nevertheless been "constantly one of interest and wonderment, interest in the distribution and ecological factors affecting species and wonderment in the overwhelming development and congruity of it all." He once noted that a naturalist "must be ecstatic at times, especially when prompted by something almost spiritual in woodland purity like the Audubon hermit thrush."
There is no reason to overestimate the originality of all this. Delight in making careful and precise observations, a concern for what man is doing to his natural surroundings, an imagined empathy for other living things, a reverent awe before the beauty and majesty of it all — these are notes already sounded by many others in the long tradition of modern poetic and prose descriptions of nature. The same is true of the relative nothingness of man before the great relentless cosmic forces and his vanity in assuming that he is the measure of all things. To celebrate the loveliness of scenery ranging from mountain to valley, stream and marsh, is by no means original with Claude Barnes. Sometimes, of course, the content can be traditional while the style adds a strong individual voice of literary genius. It would be going too far to claim such in this case. In an interesting passage Barnes praises the poet John Keats: "Every naturalist must read Keats with admiration," he said, "for the great poet often describes a scene with a word." Then Barnes goes on to notice what he saw as a limitation in the poet, who was not "accustomed to view things with the trained eye of the naturalist." "What could Keats have done," Barnes asks, if he had become a naturalist? It would be idle to deny a valid point here; the trained naturalist of the nineteenth or twentieth century did have the benefit of accumulated scientific knowledge, at the very least the established taxonomy and generic names. But it is probably fair also to notice that in his literary skills, at least in poetry, Barnes himself was lacking. What could he have done, one may ask, had he been a Keats?
Yet, something of worth remains here. In prose Barnes is fairly effective for his purposes. He speaks from his own life experience, his own reflections; using established tropes does not, of course, prove insincerity in the user. Above all, he was writing about a specific area — the Wasatch Range in the Rocky Mountains. For the natural history of City Creek Canyon, Big Cottonwood Canyon, Lambs Canyon, and the like, it is futile to turn to Thoreau or Joseph Wood Krutch or Aldo Leopold. For this area one turns to Claude Barnes, who brought to an intrinsically fascinating subject matter a lively intelligence, thorough selftraining, and considerable verbal facility.
At times Barnes appears as a modern Lucretius, a materialist who saw everything in terms of matter in motion. He was undoubtedly a Darwinist but with qualifications and reservations as the following passage illustrates:
That change and evolution have occurred was for Barnes demonstrable; why they have occurred was not at all certain. One of his favorite phrases is "the mystery of it all." Barnes objected to theological bigots and to scientists who thought they had it all explained in neat formulas. He was less interested in consistency than in constant probing. In his world beauty existed. There was congruity also. Over and over again he expressed the idea of design — the old idea that behind the watch there must be a watchmaker. But he was not an eighteenth-century naturalist who might well have seen such observations as leading inexorably to the conclusion that behind it all there was a Creator. Barnes was not confident about what design really meant, asking on one occasion, "Is design but the average of the chance direction of individual particles?" Again, he said, "There is an eventual mystery that he [the writer] cannot solve, and, as a naturalist, he can only in humility await the development of greater knowledge."
Although he by no means spoke as a firm believer, Barnes could not abandon an interest in — even an obsession with — the concept of eternity. On December 26 he wrote, "The end of the year precedes a glorious reawakening in spring; the end of life forebodes the eternal darkness of the tomb. Would that in the despair of his heart man could see some spark of light in the unfathomable reality ahead!" Here are some more glimpses of that concern:
The naturalist, if he be true to his own heart, must hope that a power so marvelously capable in design as that which he sees about himself cannot have failed to provide an ultimate of individual existence.
There is in nature, however, much more than the power to awaken aesthetic joy — it is the final hope of the intellectual that they might discover in it that most important of all things, a solution to the mystery of life. Biochemistry and physics, cytology and genetics, are leading us into strange fields, fields that might encourage the thought of individual sempernity."
Developments in those fields during the past ten years would have been watched by Claude Barnes with utter fascination.
It is interesting to discover that Barnes early became anxious about the possibility of continued existence of the human soul. He joined the London Society for Psychical Research, which was seeking some kind of scientific confirmation of the unseen world. He even exacted a promise from his parents that they would reappear to him after their death "if possible." Unfortunately for his desire, they did not do so "even in a dream."
During his retirement years Barnes wrote two works specifically on the subject of immortality. The first of these, The Duration of Mind, was submitted to and copyrighted by the Philosophical Society of England before its private publication in Utah in 1955. His conclusion, in a nutshell, is that there is no proof of continued personal existence after death, but it is not impossible. "To me it is just as absurd to deny the possibility of immortality as to adopt a religious view and claim to know something about it." Contrasting his own conclusion to that of Bertrand Russell, Barnes wrote:
Barnes goes on to mention the kind of immortality in which one's influence extends after death in the lives of children and friends.
One would think this would be the last word on the subject, but a year or two before his death Barnes published Can Science Have a Religion? In this little pamphlet he showed an intense awareness of the limitations of modern physical science. To judge from the bibliography Barnes kept up his reading rather well. Transplantation of vital organs, recent publications in enzymology, the exciting work with DNA, molecular biology, genetics and metabolism — in all these areas he was not relying on the science of the pre-World War II period. He seems quite aware of what Einstein had done to modify the Newtonian synthesis. "Our knowledge is so limited," he wrote, "that it seems arrogance to deny the possibility of anything." He did not wish people to draw the wrong conclusions. He did not see himself as lapsing into a priori modes of thought, which he considered all religion to be. "I am of humble knowledge," he said. "Who am I to deny that at the proper time laws of which there is no present evidence will arise, supersede all other laws and accomplish that which we deemed impossible?" He did not believe that man was any more important than anything else. Calling up a Mormon phrase, he saw "nothing to indicate anthropomorphism, the doctrine that as man is God once was and as God is man may become."
He had hopes to discover that the "great outside directing force had some interest in man," but in this he had failed. Still accepting the existence of a creator as the "deepest conviction of my life," he concluded:
He was a believer in spite of himself. His habitual study of the natural world had made his mind a great storehouse of facts, but he had not lost his sense of wonder, of the mystery of it all. He still yearned for meaning. This was what he meant in describing himself as a naturalist. After many years of nature walks he had accumulated so many specific memories that all he had to do was mention such words as sagebrush, foothills, pine forest, quaking aspens, or waterfalls to conjure up definite things he had seen. "It is the way of the naturalist," he said, "ever alert for beauty of color, shape or song; ever hopeful that in wide understanding will come greater comprehension of the meaning of it all." That this hope did not lead him to gloom or despair is evidenced by another statement about the naturalist's pursuits: "They who divert themselves to an investigation of all forms of nature to the end that they may find the meaning of life and the evidence of its eventual perpetuation are of men most happy, for they are on the very path of eternity."
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