which in the long run has proved a blessing to humanity, had to
establish, by hot conflict, its right to existence. Illustrious names
were arrayed against it. It had been enunciated by Hooke, it had been
expounded and applied by Huyghens, it had been defended by Euler. But
they made no impression. And, indeed, the theory in their hands lacked
the strength of a demonstration. It first took the form of a
demonstrated verity in the hands of Thomas Young. He brought the waves
of light to bear upon each other, causing them to support each other,
and to extinguish each other at will. From their mutual actions he
determined their lengths, and applied his knowledge in all directions.
He finally showed that the difficulty of polarization yielded to the
grasp of theory.
After him came Fresnel, whose transcendent mathematical abilities
enabled him to give the theory a generality unattained by Young. He
seized it in its entirety; followed the ether into the hearts of
crystals of the most complicated structure, and into bodies subjected
to strain and pressure. He showed that the facts discovered by Malus,
Arago, Brewster, and Biot were so many ganglia, so to speak, of his
theoretic organism, deriving from it sustenance and explanation. With
a mind too strong for the body with which it was associated, that body
became a wreck long before it had become old, and Fresnel died,
leaving, however, behind him a name immortal in the annals of science.
One word more I should like to say regarding Fresnel. There are things
better even than science. Character is higher than Intellect, but it
is especially pleasant to those who wish to think well of human nature
when high intellect and upright character are found combined. They
were combined in this young Frenchman. In those hot conflicts of the
undulatory theory, he stood forth as a man of integrity, claiming no
more than his right, and ready to concede their rights to others. He
at once recognized and acknowledged the merits of Thomas Young.
Indeed, it was he, and his fellow-countryman Arago, who first startled
England into the consciousness of the injustice done to Young in the
'Edinburgh Review.'
I should like to read to you a brief extract from a letter written by
Fresnel to Young in 1824, as it throws a pleasant light upon the
character of the French philosopher. 'For a long time,' says Fresnel,
'that sensibility, or that vanity, which people call love of glory has
been much blunted in me. I labour much less to catch the suffrages of
the public, than to obtain that inward approval which has always been
the sweetest reward of my efforts. Without doubt, in moments of
disgust and discouragement, I have often needed the spur of vanity to
excite me to pursue my researches. But all the compliments I have
received from Arago, De la Place, and Biot never gave me so much
pleasure as the discovery of a theoretic truth or the confirmation of
a calculation by experiment.'
* * * * *
This, then, is the core of the whole matter as regards science. It
must be cultivated for its own sake, for the pure love of truth,
rather than for the applause or profit that it brings. And now my
occupation in America is well-nigh gone. Still I will bespeak your
tolerance for a few concluding remarks, in reference to the men who
have bequeathed to us the vast body of knowledge of which I have
sought to give you some faint idea in these lectures. What was the
motive that spurred them on? What urged them to those battles and
those victories over reticent Nature, which have become the heritage
of the human race? It is never to be forgotten that not one of those
great investigators, from Aristotle down to Stokes and Kirchhoff, had
any practical end in view, according to the ordinary definition of the
word 'practical.' They did not propose to themselves money as an end,
and knowledge as a means of obtaining it. For the most part, they
nobly reversed this process, made knowledge their end, and such money
as they possessed the means of obtaining it.
We see to-day the issues of their work in a thousand practical forms,
and this may be thought sufficient to justify, if not ennoble, their
efforts. But they did not work for such issues; their reward was of a
totally different kind. In what way different? We love clothes, we
love luxuries, we love fine equipages, we love money, and any man who
can point to these as the result of his efforts in life, justifies
these results before all the world. In America and England, more
especially, he is a 'practical' man. But I would appeal confidently to
this assembly whether such things exhaust the demands of human nature?
The very presence here for six inclement nights of this great
audience, embodying so much of the mental force and refinement of this
vast city,[26] is an answer to my question. I need not tell such an
assembly that there are joys of the intellect as well as joys of the
body, or that these pleasures of the spirit constituted the reward of
our great investigators. Led on by the whisperings of natural truth,
through pain and self-denial, they often pursued their work. With the
ruling passion strong in death, some of them, when no longer able to
hold a pen, dictated to their friends the last results of their
labours, and then rested from them for ever.
Could we have seen these men at work, without any knowledge of the
consequences of their work, what should we have thought of them? To
the uninitiated, in their day, they might often appear as big children
playing with soap-bubbles and other trifles. It is so to this hour.
Could you watch the true investigator--your Henry or your Draper, for
example--in his laboratory, unless animated by his spirit, you could
hardly understand what keeps him there. Many of the objects which
rivet his attention might appear to you utterly trivial; and if you
were to ask him what is the _use_ of his work, the chances are that
you would confound him. He might not be able to express the use of it
in intelligible terms. He might not be able to assure you that it will
put a dollar into the pocket of any human being present or to come.
That scientific discovery _may_ put not only dollars into the pockets
of individuals, but millions into the exchequers of nations, the
history of science amply proves; but the hope of its doing so never
was, and it never can be, the motive power of the investigator.
I know that some risk is run in speaking thus before practical men. I
know what De Tocqueville says of you. 'The man of the North,' he says,
'has not only experience, but knowledge. He, however, does not care
for science as a pleasure, and only embraces it with avidity when it
leads to useful applications.' But what, I would ask, are the hopes of
useful applications which have caused you so many times to fill this
place, in spite of snow-drifts and biting cold? What, I may ask, is
the origin of that kindness which drew me from my work in London to
address you here, and which, if I permitted it, would send me home a
millionaire? Not because I had taught you to make a single cent by
science am I here to-night, but because I tried to the best of my
ability to present science to the world as an intellectual good.
Surely no two terms were ever so distorted and misapplied with
reference to man, in his higher relations, as these terms useful and
practical. Let us expand our definitions until they embrace all the
needs of man, his highest intellectual needs inclusive. It is
specially on this ground of its administering to the higher needs of
the intellect; it is mainly because I believe it to be wholesome, not
only as a source of knowledge but as a means of discipline, that I
urge the claims of science upon your attention.
But with reference to material needs and joys, surely pure science has
also a word to say. People sometimes speak as if steam had not been
studied before James Watt, or electricity before Wheatstone and Morse;
whereas, in point of fact, Watt and Wheatstone and Morse, with all
their practicality, were the mere outcome of antecedent forces, which
acted without reference to practical ends. This also, I think, merits
a moment's attention. You are delighted, and with good reason, with
your electric telegraphs, proud of your steam-engines and your
factories, and charmed with the productions of photography. You see
daily, with just elation, the creation of new forms of industry--new
powers of adding to the wealth and comfort of society. Industrial
England is heaving with forces tending to this end; and the pulse of
industry beats still stronger in the United States. And yet, when
analyzed, what are industrial America and industrial England?
If you can tolerate freedom of speech on my part, I will answer this
question by an illustration. Strip a strong arm, and regard the
knotted muscles when the hand is clenched and the arm bent. Is this
exhibition of energy the work of the muscle alone? By no means. The
muscle is the channel of an influence, without which it would be as
powerless as a lump of plastic dough. It is the delicate unseen nerve
that unlocks the power of the muscle. And without those filaments of
genius, which have been shot like nerves through the body of society
by the original discoverer, industrial America, and industrial
England, would be very much in the condition of that plastic dough.
At the present time there is a cry in England for technical education,
and it is a cry in which the most commonplace intellect can join, its
necessity is so obvious. But there is no such cry for original
investigation. Still, without this, as surely as the stream dwindles
when the spring dies, so surely will 'technical education' lose all
force of growth, all power of reproduction. Our great investigators
have given us sufficient work for a time; but if their spirit die out,
we shall find ourselves eventually in the condition of those Chinese
mentioned by De Tocqueville, who, having forgotten the scientific
origin of what they did, were at length compelled to copy without
variation the inventions of an ancestry wiser than themselves, who had
drawn their inspiration direct from Nature.
Both England and America have reason to bear those things in mind, for
the largeness and nearness of material results are only too likely to
cause both countries to forget the small spiritual beginnings of such
results, in the mind of the scientific discoverer. You multiply, but
he creates. And if you starve him, or otherwise kill him--nay, if you
fail to secure for him free scope and encouragement--you not only lose
the motive power of intellectual progress, but infallibly sever
yourselves from the springs of industrial life.
What has been said of technical operations holds equally good for
education, for here also the original investigator constitutes the
fountain-head of knowledge. It belongs to the teacher to give this
knowledge the requisite form; an honourable and often a difficult
task. But it is a task which receives its final sanctification, when
the teacher himself honestly tries to add a rill to the great stream
of scientific discovery. Indeed, it may be doubted whether the real
life of science can be fully felt and communicated by the man who has
not himself been taught by direct communion with Nature. We may, it is
true, have good and instructive lectures from men of ability, the
whole of whose knowledge is second-hand, just as we may have good and
instructive sermons from intellectually able and unregenerate men. But
for that power of science, which corresponds to what the Puritan
fathers would call experimental religion in the heart, you must ascend
to the original investigator.
To keep society as regards science in healthy play, three classes of
workers are necessary: Firstly, the investigator of natural truth,
whose vocation it is to pursue that truth, and extend the field of
discovery for the truth's own sake and without reference to practical
ends. Secondly, the teacher of natural truth, whose vocation it is to
give public diffusion to the knowledge already won by the discoverer.
Thirdly, the applier of natural truth, whose vocation it is to make
scientific knowledge available for the needs, comforts, and luxuries
of civilized life. These three classes ought to co-exist and interact.
Now, the popular notion of science, both in this country and in
England, often relates not to science strictly so called, but to the
applications of science. Such applications, especially on this
continent, are so astounding--they spread themselves so largely and
umbrageously before the public eye--that they often shut out from view
those workers who are engaged in the quieter and profounder business
of original investigation.
Take the electric telegraph as an example, which has been repeatedly
forced upon my attention of late. I am not here to attenuate in the
slightest degree the services of those who, in England and America,
have given the telegraph a form so wonderfully fitted for public use.
They earned a great reward, and they have received it. But I should be
untrue to you and to myself if I failed to tell you that, however high
in particular respects their claims and qualities may be, your
practical men did not discover the electric telegraph. The discovery
of the electric telegraph implies the discovery of electricity itself,
and the development of its laws and phenomena. Such discoveries are
not made by practical men, and they never will be made by them,
because their minds are beset by ideas which, though of the highest
value from one point of view, are not those which stimulate the
original discoverer.
The ancients discovered the electricity of amber; and Gilbert, in the
year 1600, extended the discovery to other bodies. Then followed
Boyle, Von Guericke, Gray, Canton, Du Fay, Kleist, Cunæus, and your
own Franklin. But their form of electricity, though tried, did not
come into use for telegraphic purposes. Then appeared the great
Italian Volta, who discovered the source of electricity which bears
his name, and applied the most profound insight, and the most delicate
experimental skill to its development. Then arose the man who added to
the powers of his intellect all the graces of the human heart, Michael
Faraday, the discoverer of the great domain of magneto-electricity.
OErsted discovered the deflection of the magnetic needle, and Arago and
Sturgeon the magnetization of iron by the electric current. The
voltaic circuit finally found its theoretic Newton in Ohm; while
Henry, of Princeton, who had the sagacity to recognize the merits of
Ohm while they were still decried in his own country, was at this time
in the van of experimental inquiry.
In the works of these men you have all the materials employed at this
hour, in all the forms of the electric telegraph. Nay, more; Gauss,
the illustrious astronomer, and Weber, the illustrious natural
philosopher, both professors in the University of Göttingen, wishing
to establish a rapid mode of communication between the observatory and
the physical cabinet of the university, did this by means of an
electric telegraph. Thus, before your practical men appeared upon the
scene, the force had been discovered, its laws investigated and made
sure, the most complete mastery of its phenomena had been
attained--nay, its applicability to telegraphic purposes
demonstrated--by men whose sole reward for their labours was the noble
excitement of research, and the joy attendant on the discovery of
natural truth.
Are we to ignore all this? We do so at our peril. For I say again
that, behind all our practical applications, there is a region of
intellectual action to which practical men have rarely contributed,
but from which they draw all their supplies. Cut them off from this
region, and they become eventually helpless. In no case is the adage
truer, 'Other men laboured, but ye are entered into their labours,'
than in the case of the discoverer and applier of natural truth. But
now a word on the other side. While practical men are not the men to
make the necessary antecedent discoveries, the cases are rare, though,
in our day, not absent, in which the discoverer knows how to turn his
labours to practical account. Different qualities of mind and habits
of thought are usually needed in the two cases; and while I wish to
give emphatic utterance to the claims of those whose position, owing
to the simple fact of their intellectual elevation, is often
misunderstood, I am not here to exalt the one class of workers at the
expense of the other. They are the necessary complements of each
other. But remember that one class is sure to be taken care of. All
the material rewards of society are already within their reach, while
that same society habitually ascribes to them intellectual
achievements which were never theirs. This cannot but act to the
detriment of those studies out of which, not only our knowledge of
nature, but our present industrial arts themselves, have sprung, and
from which the rising genius of the country is incessantly tempted
away.
Pasteur, one of the most illustrious members of the Institute of
France, in accounting for the disastrous overthrow of his country,
and the predominance of Germany in the late war, expresses himself
thus: 'Few persons comprehend the real origin of the marvels of
industry and the wealth of nations. I need no further proof of this
than the employment, more and more frequent, in official language, and
in writings of all sorts, of the erroneous expression _applied
science_. The abandonment of scientific careers by men capable of
pursuing them with distinction, was recently deplored in the presence
of a minister of the greatest talent. The statesman endeavoured to
show that we ought not to be surprised at this result, because _in our
day the reign of theoretic science yielded place to that of applied
science_. Nothing could be more erroneous than this opinion, nothing,
I venture to say, more dangerous, even to practical life, than the
consequences which might flow from these words. They have rested in my
mind as a proof of the imperious necessity of reform in our superior
education. There exists no category of the sciences, to which the name
of applied science could be rightly given. _We have science, and the
applications of science_, which are united together as the tree and
its fruit.'
And Cuvier, the great comparative anatomist, writes thus upon the same
theme: 'These grand practical innovations are the mere applications of
truths of a higher order, not sought with a practical intent, but
pursued for their own sake, and solely through an ardour for
knowledge. Those who applied them could not have discovered them; but
those who discovered them had no inclination to pursue them to a
practical end. Engaged in the high regions whither their thoughts had
carried them, they hardly perceived these practical issues though
born of their own deeds. These rising workshops, these peopled
colonies, those ships which furrow the seas--this abundance, this
luxury, this tumult--all this comes from discoveries in science, and
it all remains strange to the discoverers. At the point where science
merges into practice they abandon it; it concerns them no more.'
When the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth Rock, and when Penn made
his treaty with the Indians, the new-comers had to build their houses,
to cultivate the earth, and to take care of their souls. In such a
community science, in its more abstract forms, was not to be thought
of. And at the present hour, when your hardy Western pioneers stand
face to face with stubborn Nature, piercing the mountains and subduing
the forest and the prairie, the pursuit of science, for its own sake,
is not to be expected. The first need of man is food and shelter; but
a vast portion of this continent is already raised far beyond this
need. The gentlemen of New York, Brooklyn, Boston, Philadelphia,
Baltimore, and Washington have already built their houses, and very
beautiful they are; they have also secured their dinners, to the
excellence of which I can also bear testimony. They have, in fact,
reached that precise condition of well-being and independence when a
culture, as high as humanity has yet reached, may be justly demanded
at their hands. They have reached that maturity, as possessors of
wealth and leisure, when the investigator of natural truth, for the
truth's own sake, ought to find among them promoters and protectors.
Among the many problems before them they have this to solve, whether
a republic is able to foster the highest forms of genius. You are
familiar with the writings of De Tocqueville, and must be aware of the
intense sympathy which he felt for your institutions; and this
sympathy is all the more valuable from the philosophic candour with
which he points out not only your merits, but your defects and
dangers. Now if I come here to speak of science in America in a
critical and captious spirit, an invisible radiation from my words and
manner will enable you to find me out, and will guide your treatment
of me to-night. But if I in no unfriendly spirit--in a spirit, indeed,
the reverse of unfriendly--venture to repeat before you what this
great historian and analyst of democratic institutions said of
America, I am persuaded that you will hear me out. He wrote some three
and twenty years ago, and, perhaps, would not write the same to-day;
but it will do nobody any harm to have his words repeated, and, if
necessary, laid to heart.
In a work published in 1850, De Tocqueville says: '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.'[27] He declares his conviction that, had you been
alone in the universe, you would soon have discovered that you cannot
long make progress in practical science without cultivating theoretic
science at the same time. But, according to De Tocqueville, you are
not thus alone. He refuses to separate America from its ancestral
home; and it is there, he contends, that you collect the treasures of
the intellect, without taking the trouble to create them.
De Tocqueville evidently doubts the capacity of a democracy to foster
genius as it was fostered in the ancient aristocracies. 'The future,'
he says, 'will prove whether the passion for profound knowledge, so
rare and so fruitful, can be born and developed as readily in
democratic societies as in aristocracies. For my part,' he continues,
'I can hardly believe it.' He speaks of the unquiet feverishness of
democratic communities, not in times of great excitement, for such
times may give an extraordinary impetus to ideas, but in times of
peace. There is then, he says, 'a small and uncomfortable agitation, a
sort of incessant attrition of man against man, which troubles and
distracts the mind without imparting to it either loftiness or
animation.' It rests with you to prove whether these things are
necessarily so--whether scientific genius cannot find, in the midst of
you, a tranquil home.
I should be loth to gainsay so keen an observer and so profound a
political writer, but, since my arrival in this country, I have been
unable to see anything in the constitution of society, to prevent a
student, with the root of the matter in him, from bestowing the most
steadfast devotion on pure science. If great scientific results are
not achieved in America, it is not to the small agitations of society
that I should be disposed to ascribe the defect, but to the fact that
the men among you who possess the endowments necessary for profound
scientific inquiry, are laden with duties of administration, or
tuition, so heavy as to be utterly incompatible with the continuous
and tranquil meditation which original investigation demands. It may
well be asked whether Henry would have been transformed into an
administrator, or whether Draper would have forsaken science to write
history, if the original investigator had been honoured as he ought to
be in this land. I hardly think they would. Still I do not imagine
this state of things likely to last. In America there is a willingness
on the part of individuals to devote their fortunes, in the matter of
education, to the service of the commonwealth, which is probably
without a parallel elsewhere; and this willingness requires but wise
direction to enable you effectually to wipe away the reproach of De
Tocqueville.