FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 421 



points, or Volta's playing with his little metal discs; ami yet it is easy to see 

 that the whole system of telegraphs, telephones, electric lights and storm sig- 

 nals grows out of such insignificant beginnings. If these men or their hun- 

 dreds of successors had worked only upon tlie investigation tliat pays cash 

 down, neitlier they nor their work would have troubled the world long, and wo 

 their beneficiaries might have plodded along unconscious of a weight of obli- 

 gation. Are we sorry that those men pursued science for its own truth's sake? 



To you and me it seems a waste, perhaps, to spend whole years in prepara- 

 tion, and whole days and nights in counting, comparing and measuring the 

 relations of more than 300,000 fixed stars; and yet, it is by just such perfect 

 mapping of the heavens that trackless seas are made safe thoroughfares for 

 the nations and their wares. Tlius the stars become the seaman's guideposts, 

 au essential in the machinery of commerce, and so eflicient aids to every arti- 

 zan, every business man and every ploughman. This work could never have 

 been done for only its immediate use. Only the loving zeal of the true scien- 

 tific spirit could have wrought with the needed patience in all that complicated 

 machinery, physical and mathematical, which makes such work possible and 

 accurate. Even the larger and more definite view of the universe in which we 

 are a part, gained now by every child in our public schools, may well repay the 

 race for the cost of such an undertaking. 



But when we think that every advance in general wealth and power is a tri- 

 umph of mind over matter, and that every such triumph is an application of 

 scientific truth mined for by students of science with the patience and endur- 

 ance of devotees, we can but bow under the rule of science, as the mistress of 

 power, and render homage to such prime ministers of hers as Galileo, Kepler, 

 Newton, Faraday, Agassiz and Henry. If we can find a part of the race 

 without strength to do more than live in a combat witli the elements, we are 

 sure of its being outside the realm of science. 



But in tlius paying tribute to science do we disparage the arts? No ! if sci- 

 ence is made up of classified facts grouped under principles, the arts are ap- 

 plications of those principles in meeting wants and susceptibilities. The very 

 inventions by whicli discoveries of science are made useful and the very mate- 

 rials that science grows upon are from the arts. If science is the source of 

 power, the arts are its means of conveyance. Everywhere in the history of the 

 world the two have helped each other. Whenever and wherever for any reason 

 science has been suppressed, the arts have awaited its emancipation. Think 

 of the middle ages, shut up to the arts of adornment, because it was sacrilege 

 to know more of the universe than patriarchs, apostles and fatliers had taught I 

 Think of Spain under a niggardly fear of intelligence! Remember our own 

 sunny South untaught in science and unskilled in the industrial arts. On the 

 other hand, wherever for any reason the useful arts have lagged behind, sci- 

 ence has degenerated into mere curious speculations about possible or conceiva- 

 ble relations, with little attention to actual facts. Then both knowledge and 

 art fall together. Such appeared to be the condition of that ancient civiliza- 

 tion when a philosopher felt obliged to apologize to his fellow wisemen for 

 having once prostituted his learning to utility; he had enumerated among the 

 advantages of philosophy a few material comforts derived from it. Such may 

 be our fate, if we allow a divorcement of these perpetual partners in human 

 progress. 



But to realize how closely united these are, it is best to analyze further their 

 bond of union. In what respects is one the constant attendant of the others 

 in everyday life? I have shown in a general way how science everywhere per- 



