Why did Theodore Parker die?  He died prematurely worn out through this enormous activity,—­a warning, as well as an example.  To all appeals for moderation, during the latter years of his life, he had but one answer,—­that he had six generations of long-lived farmers behind him, and had their strength to draw upon.  All his physical habits, except in this respect, were unexceptionable:  he was abstemious in diet, but not ascetic, kept no unwholesome hours, tried no dangerous experiments, committed no excesses.  But there is no man who can habitually study from twelve to seventeen hours a day (his friend Mr. Clarke contracts it to “from six to twelve,” but I have Mr. Parker’s own statement of the fact) without ultimate self-destruction.  Nor was this the practice during his period of health alone, but it was pushed to the last moment:  he continued in the pulpit long after a withdrawal was peremptorily prescribed for him; and when forbidden to leave home for lecturing, during the winter of 1858, he straightway prepared the most laborious literary works of his life, for delivery as lectures in the Fraternity Course at Boston.

He worked thus, not from ambition, nor altogether from principle, but from an immense craving for mental labor, which had become second nature to him.  His great omnivorous, hungry intellect must have constant food,—­new languages, new statistics, new historical investigations, new scientific discoveries, new systems of Scriptural exegesis.  He did not for a day in the year nor an hour in the day make rest a matter of principle, nor did he ever indulge in it as a pleasure, for he knew no enjoyment so great as labor.  Wordsworth’s “wise passiveness” was utterly foreign to his nature.  Had he been a mere student, this had been less destructive.  But to take the standard of study of a German Professor, and superadd to that the separate exhaustions of a Sunday-preacher, a lyceum-lecturer, a radical leader, and a practical philanthropist, was simply to apply half a dozen distinct suicides to the abbreviation of a single life.  And, as his younger companions long since assured him, the tendency of his career was not only to kill himself, but them; for each assumed that he must at least attempt what Theodore Parker accomplished.

It is very certain that his career was much shortened by these enormous labors, and it is not certain that its value was increased in a sufficient ratio to compensate for that evil.  He justified his incessant winter-lecturing by the fact that the whole country was his parish, though this was not an adequate excuse.  But what right had he to deprive himself even of the accustomed summer respite of ordinary preachers, and waste the golden July hours in studying Sclavonic dialects?  No doubt his work in the world was greatly aided both by the fact and the fame of learning, and, as he himself somewhat disdainfully said, the knowledge of Greek and Hebrew was “a convenience” in theological discussions; but, after all, his popular power did not mainly depend on his mastery of twenty languages, but of one.  Theodore Parker’s learning was undoubtedly a valuable possession to the community, but it was not worth the price of Theodore Parker’s life.