THE NOBILITY OF KNOWLEDGE. 617 



joyful message. The ocean has been spanned with an electric nerve, 

 and the New World responds to the greetings of the Old. 



Here is something practical, which all can appreciate, and all are 

 ready to honor. We honor the courage which conceived, the skill 

 which executed, and, above all, the success which crowned the under- 

 taking. But, do we not forget that professor of Bologna with his 

 frogs' legs, who sowed the seed from which all this has sj^rung ? He 

 labored without hope of temporal reward, stimulated by the pure love 

 of truth ; and the grain which he planted has brought forth this abun- 

 dant harvest. Do we not forget, also, that succession of equally noble 

 men, Yolta, and Oersted, and Faraday, with many other not less 

 devoted investigators of electrical science, without whose unselfish 

 labors the great result never could have been achieved ? Such men, 

 of course, need no recognition at our hands, and I ask the question not 

 for their sakes, but for ours. The intellectual elevation of the lives 

 they led was their all-sufficient reward. 



It is, however, of the utmost importance for us, citizens of a coun- 

 try with almost unlimited resources, that we should recognize what 

 are the real springs of true national greatness and enduring influence. 

 In this age of material interests, the hand is too ready to say to the 

 head, "I have no need of thee," and, amid the ephemeral applause 

 which follows the realization of some triumph over matter, we are apt 

 to be deceived, and not observe whence the power came. We asso- 

 ciate the great invention with some man of affairs who overcame the 

 last material obstacle, and who, although worthy of all praise, probably 

 added very little to the total wealth of knowledge, of which the inven- 

 tion was an immediate consequence ; and, not seeing the antecedents, 

 we are apt to underrate the part which the student or scientific inves- 

 tigator may have contributed to the result. 



It is idle, for example, to speak of the electric telegraph as invented 

 by any single man. It was a growth of time ; and many of the men 

 who contributed to win this great victory of mind over space " builded 

 far better than they knew." As I view the subject, that invention is 

 as much a gift of Providence as if the details had been supernaturally 

 revealed. But, whatever may be our speculative views, it is of the 

 utmost importance to the welfare of our community that we should 

 realize the fact that purely theoretical scientific study, pursued for 

 truth's sake, is the essential prerequisite for such inventions. Knoicl- 

 edge is the condition of invention. The old Latin word invenio sig- 

 nifies to meet toith^ or to find ^ and these great gifts of God are met with 

 along the pathway of civilization ; but the throng of the world passes 

 them unnoticed, for only those can recognize the treasure whose minds 

 have been stored with the knowledge which the scholar has discovered 

 and made known. 



If, then, as no one will deny, science and scholarship are the pow- 

 ers by which improvements in the useful arts are made, I might appeal 



