A PLEA FOR PURE SCIENCE. 179 



Jenny Lind, with her beautiful voice, would have cultivated it 

 to some extent in her native village; yet who would expect her to travel 

 over the world, and give concerts for nothing? and how would she have 

 been able to do so if she had wished? And so the scientific man, 

 whatever his natural talents, must have instruments and a library, and 

 a suitable and respectable salary to live upon, before he is able to 

 exert himself to his full capacity. This is true of advance in all the 

 higher departments of human learning, and yet something more is 

 necessary. It is not those in this country who receive the largest 

 salary, and have positions in the richest colleges, who have advanced 

 their subject the most: men receiving the highest salaries, and occupy- 

 ing the professors chair, are to-day doing absolutely nothing in pure 

 science, but are striving by the commercial applications of their science 

 to increase their already large salary. Such pursuits, as I have said 

 before, are honorable in their proper place; but the duty of a professor 

 is to advance his science, and to set an example of pure and true devo- 

 tion to it which shall demonstrate to his students and the world that 

 there is something high and noble worth living for. Money-changers 

 are often respectable men, and yet they were once severely rebuked for 

 carrying on their trade in the court of the temple. 



Wealth does not constitute a university, buildings do not: it is the 

 men who constitute its faculty, and the students who learn from them. 

 It is the last and highest step which the mere student takes. He 

 goes forth into the world, and the height to which he rises has been 

 influenced by the ideals which he has consciously or unconsciously im- 

 bibed in his university. If the professors under whom he has studied 

 have been high in their profession, and have themselves had high 

 ideals; if they have considered the advance of their particular subject 

 their highest work in life, and are themselves honored for their intellect 

 throughout the world — the student is drawn toward that which is 

 highest, and ever after in life has high ideals. But if the student is 

 taught by what are sometimes called good teachers, and teachers only, 

 who know little more than the student, and who are often surpassed 

 and even despised by him, no one can doubt the lowered tone of his 

 mind. He finds that by his feeble efforts he can surpass one to whom 

 a university has given its highest honor and he begins to think that he 

 himself is a born genius, and the incentive to work is gone. He is 

 great by the side of the molehill, and does not know any mountain 

 to compare himself with. 



A university should not only have great men in its faculty, but have 

 nimierous minor professors and assistants of all kinds, and should 

 encourage the highest work, if for no other reason than to encourage 

 the student to his highest efforts. 



But, assuming that the professor has high ideals, wealth such as 



