When I described to her the ancient college buildings and the beautiful
chapels of Cambridge, and the religious life of the students and of
the dons, she listened spellbound. When I related to her the many
traditions of the old university, and informed her that one learned
there, not only from the teachers living there at that time, but also
from great teachers who had long departed, a luminous expression in her
eyes told me that she was about to reveal to me an original thought.
“I go to church, my son,” she said, “not so much because I expect the
priest to reveal to me some new divine truth, but because I wish to
look at the icons of saints. That reminds me of their saintly work,
and through the contemplation of their work I communicate with God.
Cambridge is a great temple consecrated to the _eternal truth_: it is
filled with icons of the great saints of science. The contemplation of
their saintly work will enable you to communicate with the spirit of
_eternal truth_.”
With this thought in her mind my mother was most happy when I bade her
good-by and, repeating her own words, told her that I must go back
to “Cambridge, the great temple which is consecrated to the _eternal
truth_.” “Go back, my son,” she said, “and may God be praised forever
for the blessings which you have enjoyed and will continue to enjoy in
your life among the saints of Cambridge.”
VII
END OF STUDIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
When I returned to Cambridge from little Idvor I often thought of my
mother’s words saying that I was living among the saints of Cambridge.
These words sounded like the language which the minstrel of the old
Serbian ballads would have used, to convey the meaning which she wished
to convey. Whenever I saw one of the great dons of Cambridge, like the
famous mathematician Cayley, or the still more famous mathematical
physicist George Gabriel Stokes, the discoverer of fluorescence, I
asked myself: “Are they the saints of Cambridge?” The answer was in
the negative; most of these men were too mobile to pass for saints.
One of them, for instance, although quite old and blind, was the
stroke of a boat which was very prominent on the river Cam. Its crew
consisted of Cambridge dons. When this aged stroke was not rowing he
was riding a spirited horse, usually galloping briskly, with his young
daughter chasing alongside of him, her long golden hair, like that of
a valkyrie, lashing the air as she made strenuous efforts to keep up
with her speedy father. It was impossible to associate one’s idea of
saints with men of that type. But, nevertheless, my mother was right:
Cambridge had its saints; their memory was the great glory of Cambridge.
_Nature_, published in London, was then, as it is to-day, the most
popular scientific weekly in the United Kingdom. Many scientists of
Cambridge used it as a medium for discussing in a popular way the
current scientific events of the day. Among the files of _Nature_,
which I consulted often, I found once a beautiful steel engraving
of Faraday, together with a brief account of Faraday’s work. It was
written by Maxwell, as I found out later. Speaking of the activity of
teachers of science, the writer said that they are expected “to bring
the student into contact with two main sources of mental growth, _the
fathers of sciences_, for whose personal influence over the opening
mind there is no substitute, and the material things to which their
labors first gave meaning.” In the light of this thought I saw that
in his two little classics, “Matter and Motion” and “Theory of Heat,”
Maxwell had brought me into contact with the fathers of dynamical
sciences, and that La Grange, in his “Méchanique Analytique,” had shown
me the men who were the fathers of the science of dynamics, and that
for this service I owed them everlasting gratitude.
Jim, the humble fireman in the Cortlandt Street factory, told me once:
“This country, my lad, is a monument to the lives of men of brains and
character and action who made it.” From that day on the name “United
States of America” recalled to my mind Washington, Hamilton, Franklin,
Lincoln, and the other great men who are universally regarded as the
fathers of this country; and when I learned to know and to appreciate
them I felt that I was qualified to consider myself a part of this
country. Maxwell and La Grange had taught me that Archimedes, Galileo,
Newton, Carnot, Helmholtz, and other great investigators had made the
dynamical sciences; and from that time on these sciences like monuments
recalled to my mind the names of the men who made them. I never saw a
man handling a crowbar without remembering that it was the historic
lever which in the philosophy of Archimedes served as the earliest
foundation for the science of statics. The word _force_ always recalled
the picture of Galileo dropping heavy bodies from the Leaning Tower
of Pisa, and watching their uniformly accelerated motions, produced
by the force which was impelling the falling body to the earth. The
picture reminded me that by these ideally simple experiments Galileo
had banished forever the mediæval superstition that bodies fall because
they are afraid of the vacuum above, and had substituted in its place
the simple law of accelerating force, which prepared the foundation for
the science of dynamics. I never saw a moving train being brought to
a standstill by the frictional reactions of the brakes without seeing
in my imagination the image of Newton formulating his great law of
equality between physical actions and physical reactions, the crowning
point of modern dynamics. These pictures illustrated what Maxwell meant
when he spoke of the material things to which the labors of Archimedes,
Galileo, and Newton gave a meaning, and when I caught that meaning I
felt that I was no longer a stranger in the land of science. Their
highest meaning, I knew, was the recognition that the truth which they
conveyed was a part only of what my mother called the “Eternal Truth.”
My work in Cambridge, guided principally by Maxwell and La Grange,
reminded me, therefore, continually of the fathers of the sciences
which I was studying and of the material things to which their labors
gave a meaning. These thoughts gave me a satisfactory interpretation
of my mother’s words: “Cambridge is a great temple consecrated to the
eternal truth; it is filled with icons of the great saints of science.
The contemplation of their saintly work will enable you to communicate
with the spirit of eternal truth.” My description of the scientific
activity of Cambridge had produced this image in her mind, which was
dominated by a spirit of piety and of reverence. This spirit, I always
thought, is needed in science just as much as it is in religion. It was
the spirit of Maxwell and of La Grange.
The atmosphere of Cambridge was most favorable to the cultivation of
a spirit of reverence in scientific thought. At that time, just as
to-day, Newton’s name was the glory of Trinity College, and the name
of Darwin was regarded with the same feeling of reverence at Christ
College. Every college at Cambridge had at least one great name which
was the glory of that college. These, one may say, were the names of
the patron saints of Cambridge; their spirit was present everywhere,
and its influence was certainly wonderful. It reminded me of my
mother’s words: “May God be praised forever for the blessings which you
have enjoyed and will continue to enjoy in your life among the saints
of Cambridge.”
It may seem strange that a Cambridge student of science should have
worried so much about interpreting his pious mother’s words in terms
of his expanding scientific knowledge. But that student was once a
Serb peasant in whose early childhood the old Serbian ballads were
his principal spiritual food. The central figure of these ballads
was Prince Marko, the national hero, who at critical moments of his
tempestuous life never appealed for aid to any man. When he needed
counsel he asked it from his aged mother Yevrosima, and when he needed
help in combat he appealed to Vila Raviyoyla, Marko’s adopted sister,
the greatest of all the fairies of the clouds. A mother can have a
wonderful influence over her boy whose early mental attitude is moulded
by impressions of that kind. When she has that influence, then she is
her boy’s oracle, and no amount of subsequent scientific training will
disturb that relationship.
I often think of an old idea which I first conceived while a student
at Cambridge. It is this: Our American colleges and universities
should have days consecrated to the memories of what Maxwell called
the fathers of the sciences, like Copernicus, Galileo, Newton,
Faraday, Maxwell, Darwin, Helmholtz. I mention these names, having
physical sciences in mind, but similar names can be mentioned in
other departments of human knowledge. Why should not science follow
the beautiful example of religion, which has its saints’ days? On
these memorial days, say Newton’s birthday, an address on Newton and
his work should tell the young student why Newton is the father of the
science of dynamics. Dynamics is not a mere collection of inexorable
physical laws which to a young student often sound like dry scientific
facts and mute formulæ. Many text-books, unfortunately, represent
it that way. It is a record of the life-work of men who lived human
lives and became what my mother called “saints of science,” because
they devoted their life-efforts to the deciphering of divine messages
which, through physical phenomena, God addresses to man. The young
mind should know as early as possible that dynamics had its origin
in the heavens, in the motions of heavenly bodies, and that it was
brought to earth by Galileo and Newton when they had deciphered the
meaning of the divine message conveyed to them by these celestial
motions. The Greeks of old sacrificed to their gods a hecatomb of
oxen whenever one of their philosophers discovered a new theorem in
geometry, and the philosopher’s memory was praised forever. The modern
nations should not remain indifferent to the memory of the “saints of
science,” whose discoveries have advanced so much the physical and
the spiritual welfare of man. My life among the saints of Cambridge
suggested this idea, and my students, past and present, know that I
have always been loyal to it, because I always believed that in this
manner every American college and university could raise an invisible
“temple consecrated to the eternal truth” and fill it with “icons of
the great saints of science.” A spirit of reverence for the science
which the student is studying should be cultivated from the very start.
I observed that spirit among my friends, the mathematical tripos men,
at Cambridge; it was there as a part of local traditions. I certainly
felt its influence, and the longer I stayed at Cambridge the more I
felt convinced that “Cambridge is a great temple consecrated to the
eternal truth.” This enabled me to recognize while still at Cambridge
that nothing was more characteristic of the mental attitude of many
scientific men in America and in England at that time than their
reverence for the “saints of science” and their strong desire to build
great temples “consecrated to the eternal truth.” Maxwell was one of
their leaders, and the best illustration of that mental attitude. I
have already referred to this in my short allusion to the Cambridge
craving for scientific research, and I shall now attempt to describe
a much wider intellectual movement of which this craving was a local
manifestation only. I felt the force of its current during my Cambridge
days, and I recognize to-day that at that time I moved along following
more or less unconsciously the stream-lines of this current.
The completion of the mathematical training under Routh recommended by
Niven was approaching its end, and I was satisfied with its results.
I could follow without much effort the lectures of Stokes and Lord
Rayleigh, and I could handle the mathematics of Maxwell’s theory of
electricity with considerable ease; but I did not understand his
physics.
President Barnard, of Columbia College, said once in an address of
fifty years ago that a young student in America at that time lacked a
“knowledge of visible things and not information about them--knowledge
acquired by the learner’s own conscious efforts, not crammed into
his mind in set forms of words out of books.” His statement fitted
admirably my own case; I lacked that knowledge of visible things which
one gets from his own conscious efforts; I had no knowledge of physics
acquired from my own conscious efforts in a physical laboratory.
Neither Columbia College nor any other college in the United States,
with very few exceptions, offered at that time this opportunity to the
student. I suspected that this was the real secret of my inability to
understand Maxwell’s physics; I longed for work in a real physical
laboratory and made preparations to enter the Cavendish Laboratory at
Cambridge. But I learned, in the beginning of 1885, that Lord Rayleigh
had given up the directorship of this laboratory, and that a Mr. J.J.
Thomson of Trinity College had been appointed as his successor, the
same Thomson who is to-day Sir John Joseph Thomson, Master of Trinity
College, and the leading physicist in the world. The new director was
only twenty-eight years of age in the year of his appointment--at the
end of 1884. Although a second wrangler in the mathematical tripos
test of 1880, he was four years later already a sufficiently famous
experimental physicist to be appointed director of the Cavendish
Laboratory. The new director was only two years older than myself, but
he was already a famous experimental physicist, whereas I had never
had a physical apparatus in my hand. What will he think of me, thought
I, when I present myself to him and ask for permission to work as a
mere beginner in the Cavendish Laboratory! I blushed when I thought of
it, and I was afraid that I should blush even more when he compared
me to his younger students who had already acquired much skill in
physical manipulations. The failure of my competition with boys and
girls in the speed tests of punching biscuits in the Cortlandt Street
cracker factory came back to my memory; and I bemoaned, just as I did
in Cortlandt Street nine years before, my hard luck of having had no
earlier training. Many an American college student of physics bemoaned
in those days his lack of early laboratory training. When I say this
I am touching the principal point of my narrative; it is the point at
which my narrative begins to sail on the back of a wave which started
actually when Johns Hopkins University was organized, in 1876, but the
motive power of which had been gathering long before that, perhaps at
the same time when the motive power of the Cambridge movement in favor
of scientific research was gathering, resulting, as it had, in the
establishment of the Cavendish Laboratory. But I must resume the thread
of my story and return later to the point just mentioned.
My lack of what Barnard called “knowledge of visible things ...
acquired by the learner’s own conscious efforts ...” gave me much
anxiety; and I often thought that it would, perhaps, be better to go
to some other university where the director of the physical laboratory
was an older man, who would not notice my age as much as would the new
and extremely young director of the Cavendish Laboratory. That thought,
however, did not console me much, because I was very much attached
to Cambridge and did not wish to give up what my mother called “life
among the saints of Cambridge.” Just then, as if by an act of kind
providence, a letter from President Barnard of Columbia College reached
me, enclosing a letter of introduction to John Tyndall, the famous
physicist, colleague and successor of Faraday in the direction of the
Royal Institution. Barnard informed me that Columbia had received a
generous sum of money from Tyndall, representing a part of the net
proceeds from his famous course of public lectures on light, which
he had delivered in the United States in 1872-1873; that the income
of this sum would be given as a fellowship to a Columbia graduate to
assist him in his study of experimental physics; that the fellowship
would be called a John Tyndall Fellowship, netting over five hundred
dollars annually; and that he and Rood, professor of physics at
Columbia, considered me a suitable candidate. Unexpected things of
this kind happen every now and then, and when they do they certainly
encourage the belief that there is such a thing as luck.
I called on Tyndall without much delay, and delivered Barnard’s letter
of introduction. One may imagine how I felt when I saw and spoke to the
very man whose descriptions of physical phenomena had been the first
to disclose to me on the top loft of the Cortlandt Street factory the
poetical side of the physical sciences. I expected to find a scientist
looking like a poet and a dreamer, but I did not. He looked exactly
what he was: a plain and benevolent Irishman. I had seen many an old
Irishman, among my New York friends and acquaintances, who looked
exactly as Tyndall looked; and when he spoke there was also the fire,
the vigor, and the humor of the agile Irish mind. In less than the time
it takes to tell this he made me feel that I had always known him, and
that he was my old and generous friend. His questions were wonderfully
direct, just as direct, I thought, as the questions which he addressed
to physical phenomena when in his famous lectures he was deciphering
their hidden meaning. He deciphered me very quickly, I thought, as if I
were the simplest physical phenomenon which he had ever observed. The
fact, however, that I held his attention encouraged me. He apparently
attached no very great importance to my lack of early training in
experimental physics, but advised me to avoid further delay. He
informed me, by way of encouraging me, that he was over thirty when
he took his doctor’s degree at the University of Marburg, in Germany.
A lack of early advantages, he thought, could always be overcome by
redoubling one’s efforts in later years. His own career proved that.
He called my attention to a short account of the work of the famous
Helmholtz, written for _Nature_ by no less a man, he said, than
great Maxwell. This story, he thought, would show me that the great
professor at the University of Berlin did not have early advantages in
experimental physics, and that he became a professor of physics when
he was already fifty years of age. He encouraged me to apply for the
new fellowship at Columbia as soon as it became operative, and to make
up my mind quickly to migrate to the best physical laboratory that I
could find. I asked him what laboratory he would recommend and he again
directed my attention to Maxwell’s account of the work of Helmholtz.
When I was about to leave, promising, at his request, to call again, he
gave me a copy of his lectures on light, which he had delivered in the
United States thirteen years before. “Read them,” he said, “and when
you come again I shall be glad to discuss with you some of the points
of this little book; they will explain to you the full meaning of
President Barnard’s letter, and of its historical background. Read also
volume VIII of _Nature_.”
I had read Tyndall’s lectures on light before I entered Columbia
College, but upon reading them again I found there very many things
which I had missed before. They did not, of course, describe
satisfactorily the physical properties of the luminiferous ether--no
lectures ever did--but they did describe, I thought, a bit of the
history of physical sciences in the United States which was a
revelation to me, and was, as I know now, a most important contribution
to the history of the development of scientific thought in the United
States. It deserves a prominent place in this narrative, because I had
been a witness of this development during the past forty years.
* * * * *
[Illustration: JOSEPH HENRY (1799-1878)]
Joseph Henry, the most distinguished American physicist, together with
other distinguished American scientists, among them President Barnard
of Columbia College, invited Tyndall, in 1872, to deliver a course of
lectures in some of the principal cities in the United States. The
object of these lectures was, quoting Tyndall’s words, “to show the
uses of experiment in the cultivation of natural knowledge,” hoping
that this “would materially promote scientific education in this
country.” Tyndall delivered his famous course of six lectures on light
in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. Joseph
Henry, as secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and president of the
National Academy of Sciences, took them under his personal direction.
The success of these lectures surpassed even the most sanguine
expectations. At the farewell dinner to Tyndall some of the wisest
scientific intellects of the land were heard, and their words indicated
clearly what was the uppermost thought in the minds of the scientific
men of the United States when they invited Tyndall. I quote here some
of the words spoken by these men.
President Barnard of Columbia, the first American expounder of the
undulatory theory of light, said:
I say, then, that our long-established and time-honored system of
liberal education ... does not tend to form original investigators
of nature’s truths....
Among the great promoters of scientific progress ... how large is
the number who may, in strict propriety, be said to have educated
themselves? Take, for illustration, such familiar names as those
of William Herschel, and Franklin, and Rumford, and Rittenhouse,
and Davy, and Faraday, and Henry. Is it not evident that nature
herself, to those who will follow her teachings, is a better guide
to the study of her own phenomena than all the training of our
schools? And is not this because nature invariably begins with the
training of the observing faculties?
The moral of this experience is, that mental culture is not secured
by pouring information into passive recipients; it comes from
stimulating the mind to gather knowledge for itself.... If we would
fit man properly to cultivate nature ... our earliest teachings
must be things and not words.
Doctor John William Draper, the world-renowned American investigator of
the laws of radiation from hot bodies, said:
Nowhere in the world are to be found more imposing political
problems than those to be settled here; nowhere a greater need
of scientific knowledge. I am not speaking of ourselves alone,
but also of our Canadian friends on the other side of the St.
Lawrence. We must join together in generous emulation of the best
that is done in Europe.... Together we must try to refute what De
Tocqueville has said about us, that communities such as ours can
never have a love of pure science.
Andrew White, President of Cornell, said:
I will confine myself to the value, in our political progress,
of the spirit and example of some of the scientific workers of
our day and generation. What is the example which reveals that
spirit? It is an example of _zeal_, zeal in search for the truth
... of _thoroughness_--of the truth sought in its wholeness ... of
_bravery_, to brave all outcry and menace ... of _devotion_ to duty
without which no scientific work can be accomplished ... of _faith_
that truth and goodness are inseparable.
The reverence for scientific achievement, the revelation of the
high honors which are in store for those who seek for truth in
science--the inevitable comparison between a life devoted to
the great pure search, on the one hand, and a life devoted to
place-hunting or self-grasping on the other--all these shall come
to the minds of thoughtful men in lonely garrets of our cities, in
remote cabins of our prairies, and thereby shall come strength and
hope for higher endeavor.
Tyndall responded in part as follows: