6i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to your self-interest to support and cherish them. But I should despise 

 myself for appealing to such a motive, and you for requiring it. The 

 supreme importance of science and scholarsliip to a nation does not 

 depend in the least on the circumstance that important practical 

 results may follow. When, as in the case of Galvani's frogs, they come 

 in the order of Providence, let us thank God for them as a gift which 

 we had no right either to expect or demand. Science, if studied suc- 

 cessfully, must be studied for the pure love of truth ; and, if we serve 

 her solely for mercenary ends, her truths, the only gold she offers, will 

 turn to dross in our hands, and we shall degrade ourselves in propor- 

 tion as we dishonor her. Galvani, and Yolta, and Oersted, who dis- 

 covered the truths of which the electric telegraph is a simple applica- 

 tion, sure to be made as soon as the time was ripe, are not the less to 

 be honored because they died before the fullness of that time had come. 

 We honor them for the truths they discovered, and the lustre of their 

 consecrated lives could be neither enhanced nor impaired by subse- 

 quent events; and it is because I am persuaded that such lives are 

 the salt of the world, the saviors of society, that I would lead you to 

 cherish and sustain them; and, that I may enforce this conclusion, 

 allow me to ask your attention to another historical incident, which 

 presents a striking parallelism to the last. 



I must take you back to a period which we, of a nation born but 

 yesterday, regard as distaiit, but which was one of the most noted 

 epochs of modern history — the age of Luther and the Reformation. I 

 mast ask you to accompany me to the small town of Allenstein, near 

 Frauenberg, in Eastern Prussia, where, on the 23d of May, 1543, there 

 lay dying one of the great benefactors of mankind. This man, old at 

 seventy years, " bent and furrowed with labor, but in whose eye the 

 fire of genius was still glowing," was then known as one of the most 

 learned men of his time. Doctor of Medicine as well as of Theology, 

 Canon of Fralienberg, Honorary Professor of Bologna and Rome, 

 while devoting his leisure to study, he had passed a life of active 

 benevolence in administering to the bodily as well as the spiritual 

 wants of the ignorant people among whom his lot had been cast. He 

 was also a great mechanical genius, and, by various labor-saving ma^ 

 chines, of his own invention, he had contributed greatly to the wel- 

 fare of the surrounding country ; but the superstitious peasants, 

 although they had hitherto reverenced the great man as their best 

 friend and benefactor, had been recently incited by his enemies and 

 rivals in the Church to curse him as a heretic and a wizard. A 

 few days back he had been the unwilling witness of one of those 

 out-of-door spectacles, so common at that time, in which his sci- 

 entific opinions had been travestied, his charities ridiculed, and his 

 devoted life made the object of slander and reproach. This ingrati- 

 tude of his flock had broken his heart, and he could not recover from 

 the blow. 



