194 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Matterhorn, their demon of adventure shows them all the kingdoms 

 of the world of science, and the glory of it ; for in fact, the inaccessi- 

 ble sky surrounds them still, and clouds obstruct their vision in every 

 direction. I have no fancy for such mountain-climbing, and think 

 lightly of exploits so barren of results. 



I seize the occasion, rather, to awake to your remembrance some 

 thoughts of common interest, which the multiplying avalanches of 

 facts and theories threaten to bury out of sight, as the pure ice of the 

 glacier gets covered over with a sordid sheet of debris, perpetually 

 tumbling from the cliffs between which it flows. 



Consider, then, first, that the final cause of a glacier is not to carry 

 moraines, lateral or medial ; that these are mere accidents of its exist- 

 ence ; and that, were it endowed with intelligence, it would feel little 

 interest and less pride in the heterogeneous, variable, and for the most 

 part useless, burden, which it can not escape, and throws away at the 

 close of its career. Such are the loads of science which we are com- 

 pelled to carry forward through life, in the forms of fact and theory ; 

 misshapen, accidental droppings upon us from our local surroundings ; 

 fragmentary specimens of knowledge, of which we construct our con- 

 fused and shapeless heaps of learning, most of which is of little use, 

 either to ourselves or to the world. The life of the glacier is an elab- 

 oration of the universal moisture into snow, neve, and pure ice, by a 

 slow process of internal constitution ; an-d such is the happy destiny 

 of the true man of science, worked out in wisdom of character, apart 

 from all accidental accumulations of learning, and mainly irrespec-tive 

 of them. 



Let us avoid the sacrifice of character to science. As the saying 

 of Jesus of Nazareth, that the sabbath was made for man, not man for 

 the sabbath, has rung through the centuries, a tocsin of alarm to rouse 

 mankind to resist ecclesiasticism, so let the warning cry fill the air of 

 our association, from meeting to meeting, that science is our means, 

 and not our end. Self-culture is the only real and noble aim of life. 

 And as the magnificence, beauty, and utility of a glacier, as a perpet- 

 ual reservoir of solid moisture, are not gauged by the size, arrangement, 

 or constitutional features of its moraines, neither are the greatness and 

 usefulness of the philosopher measured by his amount of the knowl- 

 edge of the physical faet-and-theory science of the times. 



Of all kinds of intellectual greatness, the greatest is achieved by 

 the philosopher who stands before the thinking world as a model of 

 scientific virtue ; deaf to flattery ; insensible to paltry, hostile criti- 

 cism ; patient of opposition ; dead to the temptations of self-interest ; 

 calmly superior to the misjudgments of the short-sighted ; whom noth- 

 ing diverts from the endeavor to live nobly, and to whom noble means 

 are as indispensable as noble ends ; in whom the most brilliant suc- 

 cesses foster neither vanity nor arrogance ; to whom fame is unimpor- 

 tant, and poverty a trivial circumstance ; whose joys, like fragrant 



