A PLEA FOR PURE SCIENCE. 39 



which prompted Faraday to devote his life to the study of nature may 

 actuate a few noble men to give their lives to scientific work ; but, if 

 we wish to cultivate this highest class of men in science, we must 

 open a career for them worthy of their efforts. 



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 scien- 

 tific 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 ad- 

 vanced their subject the most : men receiving the highest salaries, 

 and occupying the professor's chair, are to-day doing absolutely noth- 

 ing 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 devotion 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 intel- 

 lect 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 sur- 

 passed 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 

 thi'nk that he himself is a born genius, and the incentive to work is 

 gone. He is great by the side of the mole-hill, and does not know 

 any mountain to compare himself with. 



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

 have numerous minor professors and assistants of all kinds, and should 



