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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



and suppressed. There may be a ver- 

 bal recognition of the high claims of 

 science, and many compliments turned 

 to its heroic devotees, but the real feel- 

 ing is evinced in exclamations of won- 

 der at the curious eccentricity of mind 

 that can forego the solid advantages 

 of working for wealth, and prefer men- 

 tal occupations that lead to empty hon- 

 or and certain poverty. 



An historical illustration will per- 

 haps bring out more clearly this view, 

 which is now coming to be regarded as 

 so peculiarly American. There lived 

 in England, in the last century, a man 

 of science, named Henry Cavendish, 

 who was born in 1731, and died in 1810. 

 He was a gentleman of fine cultivation, 

 an excellent mathematician, a profound 

 electrician, and a most acute and in- 

 genious chemist. He published many 

 papers, containing results of recondite 

 investigations and the most important 

 discoveries. He was not only a great 

 original thinker, but a most indefatiga- 

 ble and accurate experimenter, and one 

 of his main lines of research was the 

 chemical constitution of the atmos- 

 phere. He made no less than 500 anal- 

 yses of the air, and it is to him that 

 we owe our chief knowledge of the 

 composition of the breathing medium. 

 Now, there is not an American that 

 will not commend all this as most prop- 

 er and admirable. But there is another 

 side to the case. Henry Cavendish was 

 a man of enormous wealth, for which 

 he cared absolutely nothing. He was 

 one of the greatest proprietors of stock 

 in the Bank of England, and when on 

 one occasion his balance had accumu- 

 lated to $350,000, and the directors, 

 thinking it too much capital to lie un- 

 productive, asked him if they should 

 not invest it, he simply replied, " Lay 

 it out, if you please." That small por- 

 tion of his wealth which he could make 

 use of in his investigations was so 

 used, but he did not allow the remain- 

 der of it to divert his thoughts in the 

 slightest degree from the unremitting 



prosecution of his scientific labors. He 

 died worth $7,000,000, which was an 

 immense sum of money at the beginning 

 of this century, but he had not the 

 slightest interest in those objects for 

 which wealth is generally prized. Now, 

 the whole case being given, to the eye 

 of the typical American, Henry Cav- 

 endish will be regarded as a fool. 

 " With all that money, 1 ' the represent- 

 ative American would say, "I could 

 keep a yacht, and a stud of fast horses, 

 and build a church, and endow a col- 

 lege, and send a dozen missionaries to 

 the heathen, and run a whole political 

 campaign at my own expense ; and you 

 say this odd creature actually spent 

 life in the smudge and stenches of a 

 chemical laboratory, puttering with gas- 

 es, and worried about the composition 

 of the air! " 



We do not here exaggerate the vul- 

 gar passion of Americans for money, 

 and their relative and consequent in- 

 difference to other things. The coun- 

 try does not breed Cavendishes, and, if 

 one should appear, he would stand a 

 first-rate chance of getting into a luna- 

 tic asylum, as the bare fact of his in- 

 difference to riches would be held as 

 prima-facie evidence of an unsound 

 mind ! The science that gives promise 

 of immediate results, that can be turned 

 into money, is appreciated ; that which 

 aims only at the extension of scientific 

 truth wins little support. Prof. Tyndall 

 devoted the profits of his lectures in this 

 country, all the results of six months' 

 labor, to assist in promoting the educa- 

 tion of such young men as possess a tal- 

 ent for physical researches, and wish 

 to qualify themselves for pursuing the 

 work. It was a noble object, and one 

 that had been nowhere provided for. 

 Prof. Tyndall did not propose to found 

 a school of research, but to help young 

 men to avail themselves of the best in- 

 stitutions already existing for the ac- 

 quisition of a special culture, the cult- 

 ure needed to carry on successful origi- 

 nal inquiries. There have been many 



