of the American patriots of the stormy period preceding the
Civil War. One of them, Daniel Webster, was a youth of seventeen
when Washington died, and he knew personally some of the great
leaders of the Revolutionary period, like Jefferson and Adams. He
certainly caught by direct contact the idealism of this period.
Read his speeches, as I have read them during my apprenticeship
days in America, and you will understand what I mean by American
idealism, if this war has not shown it to you better than any
words of mine can do it. Webster’s idealism was in the hearts
of men of his generation, who, under the great leadership of
Lincoln, one of the greatest among American idealists, conducted
the Civil War and preserved the American Union. Lincoln’s immortal
words: “With malice toward none, with charity for all,” will
forever remind the world of the idealism which was in the hearts
of the American people who fought for the preservation of the
American Union. President Wilson is one of the best biographers of
George Washington, and he also published a splendid study of the
constitutional government of the United States. No profound student
of these themes can escape becoming an exalted idealist. His
speeches, which during the World War he addressed to the American
people and to the whole world, are sermons on American idealism,
which have guided the people of the United States from the very
beginning of their history; but some of you in Europe never
understood it. The world war has made you eager to listen to every
word which inspires your anxious hearts with new hopes. President
Wilson’s words and his acts at the Paris peace conference inspire
you with these new hopes, and hence this Wilson Day, an honor to
him and a credit to you. In honoring him you are honoring the
idealism of the American people, for which act I am most grateful
to you.
It was here in Panchevo that I first heard of Benjamin Franklin,
nearly fifty years ago; to-day I deliver to you, people of
Panchevo, a greeting from Franklin’s native land and a message that
the cultivation of American idealism is the most powerful arm for
the defense of the destiny of your young nation.
Hamilton Fish Armstrong, our military _attaché_ in Belgrade at that
time, was present at the meeting. He did not understand a word of
my address, because it was delivered in Serbian, but he assured me
that, judging by appearances, it must have been at least as good as
my address in Princeton in the beginning of the World War in 1914;
he was then a senior at Princeton College. The Princeton address was
a eulogy of Serbian idealism, which I had imported into America when
I landed at Castle Garden in 1874; the Panchevo address was a eulogy
of American idealism, which I had brought back to Panchevo forty-five
years later. I must confess, however, that, twenty-five years earlier,
the above address was delivered in substance to Protoyeray Zhivkovich,
the poet-priest of Panchevo, when after graduating at Columbia in 1883
I returned for the first time to my native village. On that occasion
the poet said, and here I quote from an earlier chapter of my narrative:
Tell your mother that I am happy to bear the whole responsibility
for your wandering away to distant America. It is no longer
distant; it is now in my heart; you have brought America to us. It
was a new world in my terrestrial geography; it is now a new world
in my spiritual geography.
I often think of these words now, and I firmly believe that there
are many millions of people in Europe to-day who think that America
is a new world in their spiritual geography. The people in Panchevo,
I am certain, think so. But it needed a world war to eliminate from
their minds the old superstition that this is the land of “American
materialism.” The world pendulum has swung the other way, and I often
wonder whether we can live up to the very high reputation which we
enjoy in the opinion of a large part of the world, which now knows our
virtues but does not know our shortcomings.
A short time after the Panchevo celebration, a number of scientists
of the University of Belgrade, members of the Royal Serbian Academy,
invited me to an informal conference, and asked me to tell them
something about American science and its National Research Council in
Washington. I do not think that on that occasion my discourse on this
most interesting topic impressed my Serbian friends as strongly as my
Panchevo discourse did. For a long time after this conference I thought
of many things that I might have said, but did not say. The more I
thought about it the more I was dissatisfied. I was informed several
months after this conference that one of the Serbian scientists present
remarked to a mutual friend that from my Panchevo address on American
idealism he had been led to believe that at the Belgrade conference
I would say something about idealism in American science. But I said
nothing, and he inferred, therefore, that there could not be much
idealism in American science, a thing which he had always suspected.
Many European scientists suspected that long before he did. That
permissible inference of the Serbian scientist hurt me, and it hurt
the more because I felt that the omission was unpardonable. But the
psychology at the Panchevo celebration was different from that at the
conference in Belgrade. In Panchevo a remark was made from which, I was
afraid, one might have inferred that this is a country of materialism.
Nobody at the Belgrade conference suggested the thought that American
science might, perhaps, have a taint of materialism. But, of course, no
Serbian scientist could have suggested such a thing when the memory of
the service of American science to Serbia during the typhus ravages of
1915 was still fresh in everybody’s mind.
A fireplace fed by slow-burning wood must be stirred up often to
maintain a lively flame. Similarly, the flame of a slow mental
combustion cannot be maintained without occasional stirring. My
mental combustion at the Belgrade conference was certainly slow, and
needed a stirring up, similar to that which it received in Panchevo.
My early studies of American history and American traditions would
have proceeded much more slowly, if it had not been for my old friend
Bilharz, who stirred me up with his prejudices against American
democracy, and with his everlasting complaints against the imaginary
spectre which he called American materialism.
This stirring up is experienced by many American citizens of foreign
birth whenever they visit their native land. Every one of these
visits speeds up the Americanization process which is going on in
them. I firmly believe that the amalgamation of the foreign-born
would be speeded up wonderfully if we could make it obligatory that
every foreign-born American citizen should revisit his native land at
stated intervals of time. Had I not visited my native land so many
times since my landing at Castle Garden in 1874, the memory of my
early experiences in America, described in the earlier parts of this
narrative, would probably have faded away completely long ago. Had
I not visited Belgrade and Panchevo in 1919 I should not have been
stirred up on the subject of American idealism, and particularly about
the American idealism in science. It was in Belgrade and Panchevo where
the stimulus was applied which revived the memory of my experiences in
Columbia College, in the Universities of Cambridge and Berlin, and in
my professorial work at Columbia University, and made me pass in rapid
review through all my experiences which have a bearing upon American
idealism, and particularly upon the idealism in American science. Ever
since, I have been revolving in my mind many of the things relating
to American science that I might have mentioned at the Belgrade
conference, but did not mention. The painting, “Men of Progress,” which
I first saw at Cooper Union in 1876, came back to my mind. The men
represented in it, like Peter Cooper, McCormick, Goodyear, Morse, and
others, did not represent the idealism in science which the Belgrade
scientist had in mind; they were practical inventors. They were the
scientific idols of the American people, but they were not idealists in
science. The time for idealism in American science had not yet arrived.
The Union Pacific Railroad had not yet been built when that picture was
painted; the Western plains had not yet been compelled to yield their
potential treasures of golden grain; and the vast quantities of coal
and mineral ore were waiting anxiously to be raised to the surface of
the earth to serve in the development of our vast territory between the
Atlantic and the Pacific. He who could aid the people in this gigantic
development became the idol of the people. The names of inventors, like
McCormick, Goodyear, and Morse, were household words with the people of
the United States, just as the names of Edison and of Bell are to-day.
Joseph Henry, the famous scientist, was also in that historic painting,
but he was in the background of it. His expression seemed to indicate
that he did not feel quite at home in a group of men who were practical
inventors. He was a friend of Lincoln, and his idealism in science was
just as exalted as Lincoln’s idealism in political philosophy. But in
those days an idealist in science attracted little attention among
the people of the United States, who were busily engaged in solving
their numerous economic problems. Hence Joseph Henry, the idealist in
science, was practically unknown. This was the mental attitude which
Europe called “American materialism” in science. De Tocqueville, the
famous French traveller and keen observer, said this about us in a book
which he published over seventy years ago:
It must be confessed that, among the civilized peoples of our age,
there are few in which the highest sciences have made so little
progress as in the United States.... The future will prove whether
the passion for profound knowledge, so rare and so fruitful,
can be born and developed so readily in democratic societies as
in aristocracies.... The man of the North ... does not care for
science as a pleasure, and only embraces it with avidity when it
leads to useful applications.
To-day this criticism sounds like a national libel, but fifty years
ago it was swallowed like a bitter pill which, in the opinion of many
patriotic thinkers, we needed if we were to be cured of a malady which
threatened to become a national calamity. The greatest leaders of
scientific thought in this country pointed to our educational system,
in order to prove that de Tocqueville was right and that science was
neglected in our schools and colleges. Foremost amongst them were, as
I have already pointed out in this narrative, Joseph Henry, President
Barnard, of Columbia, President White, of Cornell, Draper, Youmans,
and others. They were all idealists in science, and when they invited
Tyndall to this country, fifty years ago, they invited the most
eloquent apostle of scientific idealism. The great movement for higher
scientific research, inaugurated in England by the immortal Maxwell and
his supporters, and in this country by the great Joseph Henry and his
followers, was a movement for idealism in science, or, as Andrew White
called it, “hope for higher endeavor.”
When the European speaks of materialism in American science, he is
resurrecting notions which de Tocqueville had in his mind when he wrote
the lines quoted above. These notions were correct, but wonderful
changes have taken place in this country since de Tocqueville wrote his
book. If he were living now and published another edition of his famous
book, I am sure that he would insert a chapter which would speak of
idealism and not of materialism in American science.
What is the mental attitude which I call “idealism in science”? Before
answering this question it is well to quote here from an earlier part
of my narrative:
The _eternal truth_ was, according to my understanding at that
time, the sacred background of Tyndall’s scientific faith, and
the works of the great scientific discoverers, their lives, and
their methods of inquiry into physical phenomena were the only
sources from which the human mind can draw the light which will
illuminate that sacred background. He nourished that faith with a
religious devotion, and his appeals in the name of that faith were
irresistible. His friends in America and in England, who were glad
to have him as their advocate of the cause of scientific research,
had the same faith that he had, and they nourished it with the
same devotion. I know to-day ... that this faith was kindled and
kept alive ... by the light of the life and of the wonderful
discoveries of Michael Faraday.... He was their contemporary, and
his achievements, like a great search-light, showed them the true
path of scientific progress.
The worship of the eternal truth and the burning desire to seek an
ever-broadening revelation of it constitute the mental attitude which
I call “idealism in science.” Its growth in the British Empire, and
particularly at the University of Cambridge, has been most remarkable
since the great movement started under the leadership of Maxwell
a little over fifty years ago. What progress have we made since
Tyndall’s visit to this country in 1872? If in my narrative I succeed
in answering this question I shall be more than satisfied, and I shall
certainly send a translation of it in part to my scientific friends in
Belgrade. It will tell them what I ought to have told them four years
ago.
* * * * *
I return now to the point in my story where I digressed. The 14th
of April, 1896, is recorded in my calendar as a happy day. The 15th
started with a balmy spring morning full of glorious sunshine. The
suggestion to walk through Central Park to Columbia College to my
morning lecture could not be resisted, and I reached the lecture-room
full of the joy of life which fills the heart of every healthy
youth. My students told me later that the first part of my lecture
that morning displayed that joy. But, near the end of the lecture, I
suddenly collapsed. A sudden chill struck me like a bolt from a clear
sky. Five days later my life hung in the balance; there was a desperate
struggle between a stout heart and the busy poisons of dreaded
pneumonia. The heart won out. But when the crisis had passed, and my
physician thought that I was sufficiently strong to stand the shock of
terrible news, he told me that my wife had died several days before, a
victim of dreaded pneumonia. She had caught the seed of this merciless
disease while nursing me. My weakened heart stood the shock, but every
one of my nerves seemed to snap in two. For the first time in my life
I recognized the full meaning of will-power; I recognized it because
I knew that the spiritual motor, the power of which I had always
felt, was there no longer. For the first time since leaving my native
Idvor, twenty-six years before, I had to be steered and looked after
by others. Life never looked so hopeless as it did during that awful
spring of 1896. But I wanted to live, because I had a little daughter
to bring up. That, in fact, was the only thing that I wanted to live
for; everything else seemed either devoid of interest, or much beyond
my reach. It is an awful thing to lose one’s self-reliance. Aims and
aspirations appeared to me like little toy balloons that children play
with; our nerves, I thought, are the strings which keep them afloat
within the reach of our vision. When these strings snap in two, our
aims and aspirations, like toy balloons, disappear rapidly into thin
air.
My physician recommended that during that summer I should settle down
in Norfolk, Connecticut, to give the bracing climate of this New
England town in the Berkshire hills a chance to rebuild what overwork,
under nervous tension, and pneumonia had undermined and torn down. A
New York physician, who knew me through my X-ray work, offered to rent
me his summer residence, facing Haystack Mountain, the highest peak in
Norfolk, and I accepted it. This mountain is really only a hill, hardly
one thousand feet higher than the road at its foot, but as I sat on
the piazza in front of that little cottage and looked at the so-called
observatory, a square frame structure on the top of this hill, from
which people caught the distant view of the Housatonic valley, I
wondered whether I should ever be strong enough to climb to its top.
I recalled my exploits in Switzerland, thirteen years before, and,
utterly discouraged by the comparison, I accepted with calm resignation
that I had grown old and decrepit in less time than it takes other
people to become middle-aged. Whenever I thought of my past, present,
or future, I always managed to draw some gloomy conclusion of that
kind, and, so far as my cloudy fancy could see, I felt that I had
finished my career in dismal failure. People told me that these were
queer notions due to mental depression, from which I would soon
recover. But, as time went on and there was no relief, I resented it
when people tried to console me with, what I considered, empty promises
of a brighter future. There suddenly appeared an angel who promised
nothing but gave much.
Another New York physician, the well-known Doctor Frederick Shepard
Dennis, also an admirer of my X-ray work, had a summer residence at
Norfolk. He was practically a native of this quaint New England town,
and believed in its great virtues as a resort for convalescents. He
was very anxious that my summer vacation there should put me on my
feet again, but he saw that my introspective life on the lonely piazza
facing Haystack Mountain blocked every road which might lead to my
physical and mental restoration. “Professor,” said he one day to
me, “if you do not stop thinking about yourself you will never get
well.” “But,” said I, “what else is there to think about? I hate to
think about that horrible green phosphorescence of vacuum tubes, about
the X-rays, fluorescent screens, and skeletons of hands and feet and
ribs. Those are the things which haunted incessantly my burning brain
during the pneumonia fever, and I shall never think of them again if
I can help it. I should like to think about some other problems which
are waiting in my laboratory, but what is the use? I have no hope of
living long enough to solve them, or that, if I live, I shall have the
necessary brain energy to work out their solution. Besides, whenever I
begin to think of something pleasant or interesting my heart suddenly
gives a violent thump, and sends a cold shiver through my timid veins.
I must think of myself, because I am always on my guard against
something that might happen at any moment to cut the last thread of
my shaky vitality. It is this everlasting fear that keeps me thinking
about myself.” The good doctor looked thoughtful, but said nothing;
a few days later he drove up in a little yellow runabout, drawn by a
pair of cobs of beautiful dark chestnut color, which were a splendid
product of his stud farm; they shone like old mahogany. “How do you
like them, professor?” asked the doctor, as he scrutinized my admiring
gaze. “They are a thing of beauty and a joy forever,” said I, and I
meant what I said. The next day the cobs, with wagon and harness, were
mine; they were only three years old, and, although broken to harness,
they were quite raw and needed training. I got them after pledging my
word to the doctor that I would train them. My native Banat is like
Kentucky. Everybody raises horses, and everybody knows by intuition how
to handle a horse. I was told by experts that I handled those cobs just
right. While training them I really trained my own nerves. They needed
it more than the cobs did. “Horse sense” has meant to me ever since a
sense which enables man to train a horse, and that means to give up
your whole heart and soul to the horse. The trainer must never think
of himself, but always of his beloved animal. He must be patient and
persistent, kind and affectionate, forgiving mistakes and showing full
appreciation for even the smallest honest effort. Only by the exercise
of these virtues can he succeed in developing in the horse the habit
of being a splendid horse. Doctor Dennis was a great lover of horses,
and he knew all that, and thought, as he told me later, that it was the
best medicine for me.
My cobs acquired the best of habits, and at the end of a year they were
two beautifully balanced animals, carrying their proud heads on high,
and stepping up in perfect unison. They seemed, when in full action, to
be anxious to strike their foreheads with their knees. To sit behind
those animals, and watch their swaggering motion around the horse-show
ring, gave a thrill never to be forgotten. The New York horse-show in
Madison Square Garden, in the autumn of 1897, and the Philadelphia
horse-show at Wissahickon, in the spring of 1898, established the
great reputation of Comet and Princess Rose, the cobs that I had been
training during eighteen months. They won many prizes, but none of
them was as welcome as the prize of my restored health. I got well
without knowing that I was getting well; the only improvement that I
was watching and thinking about was the improvement of my beautiful
cobs, but, nevertheless, my laboratory assistant Cushman noticed in
the early spring of 1897 that I had already begun to speak much more
encouragingly about some of my old laboratory problems; he noticed it,
and he was happy again. The X-ray problems were not among them; I never
recovered from the feeling of horror which the thought of them gave me
during my sickness in April, 1896.
Reginald Rives, one of the social leaders of New York, was the judge at
Wissahickon who awarded the prizes to my cobs. We had been in college
together, but when he saw me at the horse-show he did not recognize me
at first, because, as he informed me later, he did not expect to see
a college professor driving high-steppers at a horse-show. He spoke
very highly of my cobs, which won from a competitor like millionaire
Widener’s stable in Philadelphia.
“Pupin,” exclaimed Rives, “if you can handle your students as well as
you can handle your cobs, you are the greatest professor in America.”
“I could,” said I, “if I had to handle only two students at a time, but
not two hundred.” Rives repeated this remark to his brother, a trustee
of Columbia University, and the trustee saw in it quite a chunk of
educational philosophy. The preceptorial system at Princeton reminds
one of this philosophy. Will the American colleges ever adopt it?
A famous Boston lover of horses, a Mr. Jordan, saw my cobs at the
Wissahickon horse-show and made me a handsome bid for them in cash
besides “throwing in” a very handsome Irish hunter which had won a
prize in the jumping class. The hunter became my saddle-horse, and
served me loyally for fully twelve years. No better saddle-horse ever
cantered over the hillsides of Litchfield County than Clipper, the
Irish hunter, my trusty friend and companion, particularly during my
summer vacations. Thanks to Comet and Princess Rose, and to good old
Clipper, and to the bracing climate of Norfolk hills, the joy of life
returned again.
My first job after landing at Castle Garden was on a farm, and there I
had vowed that as soon as I could afford it I would buy myself a real
American farm. A little over twenty years later, in 1897, I bought a
farm at Norfolk; this blessed spot, where I regained my health and
happiness, became my real American home, and I have never had a desire
to seek a better haven of happiness in any other place, either here or
in Europe.
The native of Norfolk is a typical Connecticut Yankee. Neither the
wealth nor the social position of a new summer visitor can faze him.
His dignity and self-respect forbid him to kowtow to any city swell.
You will get his respectful attention if you deserve it; but you must
earn it by your acts at Norfolk. You cannot command it by the power
of anything you bring with you from the city to your summer vacation.
While you are in Norfolk in summer, you are a summer boarder, an
outsider, with traditions back of you which no native of Norfolk knows
anything about. The force of all this was once so strongly impressed
upon me that I never forgot it.
[Illustration: PUPIN’S RESIDENCE AT NORFOLK, CONN., WITH ADJOINING
FARM BUILDINGS AND THE 500-TON SILO]
Norfolk, like every New England town, has its annual town meetings,
when the accounts of the town for the closing current year are
carefully analyzed, appropriations are made for the coming year, and
the selectmen and other administrative officers are elected. After
I had become a landowner in Norfolk, I attended these town meetings
regularly, and took part in their discussions, and there for the first
time I became acquainted, by personal contact, with the fundamental
elements of Anglo-Saxon civilization. At one of those town meetings
I urged the improvement of the public highways, using the argument
that better roads would attract more summer residents from the great
cities and, I was certain, would advance the prosperity of the town.
My arguments were received with respectful silence, and no sooner had
I finished my speech than a Mr. Nettleton, the oldest voter in the
township, got up and, turning his black goggles toward me, addressed me
somewhat as follows: