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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



number of very eminent men of science, 

 with all of whom he formed the most 

 satisfactory relations. " The philoso- 

 phers of Germany," he says and the 

 testimony is one of which Germans 

 may be proud "were men of the lof- 

 tiest moral tone." It was the recogni- 

 tion which Tyndall's scientific essays 

 received in Germany which awakened 

 the world of science in England to a 

 sense of his greatness. In 1852 he was 

 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, 

 and in June of the year following he 

 was appointed Professor of Natural 

 Philosophy in the Royal Institution, of 

 which, on the retirement of Faraday a 

 few years later, he became superin- 

 tendent. 



It is needless to give an enumeration 

 of the works which Prof. Tyndall gave 

 to the world, but we may remark that 

 his life-work falls into two portions, 

 original research into the most abstruse 

 questions of science and earnest at- 

 tempts at the popularization of scien- 

 tific knowledge. Tiiere are those who 

 are pleased to say that scientific knowl- 

 edge can not be popularized ; but the 

 statement would be safer if it affirmed 

 merely their own inability to popularize 

 it an inability which, in some cases, 

 we have very little doubt, springs from 

 unwillingness. No man ever knew 

 better or felt more strongly than Prof. 

 Tyndall how rigorous are the demands 

 of scientific investigation in the way 

 both of preparation and of method, and 

 yet no man was more willing than he, 

 whenever his severer engagements per- 

 mitted, to open, or try to open, the door 

 of knowledge to the unlearned public. 

 *' Look jealously," he said twenty years 

 ago, on the occasion of the banquet to 

 him in tliis city, "upon the investigator 

 who is fond of wandering from his true 

 vocation to appear on public platforms. 

 The practice is absolutely destructive of 

 original work of a high order." True 

 enough, the man who, being supposedly 

 equipped for the work of advanced in- 

 vestigation, is fond of wandering from 



that work in order to appear on public 

 platforms, is a man our confidence in 

 whom as an original investigator is apt 

 to be weakened ; but it is one thing to 

 be fond of escaping from the severer 

 tasks of science and quite another to re- 

 linquish them from time to time under 

 a sense of duty ; and we should be in- 

 clined to say that no man should be so 

 immersed in the specialties and tech- 

 nicalities of minute investigation as to 

 be unable to lay before a popular audi- 

 ence a general view of some portion ot 

 the scientific field. How the possession 

 of the power to do the latter would in- 

 terfere with the power of carrying on 

 even the profoundest studies we are at 

 a loss to imagine, though we are pre- 

 pared to admit that possibly the con- 

 stant habit of dealing with difficult and 

 abstruse problems, the very language 

 and symbolism of which are absolutely 

 unintelligible to the lay mind, may, if 

 allowed to do so, develop a real incapaci- 

 ty for popular exposition. It did not, 

 however, lead to this result in the case 

 of Prof. Tyndall, nor in that of his even 

 greater predecessor Faraday; and we 

 venture to conjecture that the great Sir 

 Isaac Newton himself could, if he had 

 wished, have delivered a very good pop- 

 ular lecture in astronomy. 



We have spoken of Prof. Tyndall's 

 visit to this country. No man of sci- 

 ence from abroad was evermore hearti- 

 ly received ; perhaps none was ever so 

 heartily received, and yet we have had 

 among us Huxley and Spencer, who both 

 stand very high in the opinion and re- 

 gard of the American people. How dis- 

 interestedly he pursued his vocation 

 here is doubtless known to all our read- 

 ers. Had his object been to make money 

 he could have returned to England with 

 the respectable sum for a scientific 

 man of thirteen thousand dollars in 

 his pocket. That was not his object, 

 however; and, finding himself possessed 

 of this sum over and above all the ex- 

 penses of his tour, he placed it in the 

 hands of trustees for the assistance of 



