40 KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



there are differences in tastes ; occasionally we see some one who 

 seems to have no interest in knowledge of causes ; but nearly all chil- 

 dren and young people, those who have not been made sordid by 

 the buffetings of hardship, find a real and pure pleasure in knowledge. 



I believe that the pursuit of science from the love of truth, with no 

 thought of material reward in cash or honors, is the source of most of 

 the advantages of science that we enjoy. We hear much now of the 

 wonders of electricity, and the place that it has made in our daily life 

 is truly marvelous. I presume that if a hundred educated people, 

 take them as they come, were to be asked who deserves the most credit 

 for this, the majority of them would have to admit that they did not 

 know, and most of the remainder would name Thomas A. Edison. 

 The importance of the work of Edison is not to be questioned, and 

 his name will be written large on the roll of those who have benefited 

 their race by the practical application of science ; but back of his work, 

 and far above it in merit, lie the fundamental discoveries of Joseph 

 Henry, a professor of mathematics working at natural philosophy from 

 love of it, and of Michael Faraday, a bookbinder fascinated by science, 

 whose discovery that a magnet moved across a closed conductor 

 generates an electric current therein is the foundation of the modern 

 dynamo. Faraday was a typical man of science, who found his great- 

 est pleasure in studying the workings of nature merely to know them. 

 All honor to him and such as he. While those who have developed 

 and applied fundamental discoveries are not to be despised, as some 

 affect to believe, the greater honor belongs to those devotees of pure 

 science who make the applications possible. I think I am not going 

 too far in saying that the man who is always asking "What good will 

 it do?" or "How much is there in it?" will never accomplish great 

 things even in applying the discoveries of others. 



In view of the great accomplishments of science and the stuijen- 

 dous bulk of facts amassed, the question may well be asked : "Is this 

 process of discovery to continue at the same or an accelerated rate in 

 the future, or are the chief generalizations of science now in our pos- 

 session ? " I see no reason why this question might not have been 

 asked at almost any time in the past. It is the tendency of each 

 human society to ascribe to itself accession to the acme of eminence. 

 It is true that facts are not as near the surface now as they were be- 

 fore Faraday, but it is also true that the available weapons of science 

 are correspondingly more potent, and I suspect that a man of genius 

 — a Faraday, a Huxley, or a Darwin — can make discoveries to-day as 

 easily as in 1830. He must acquaint himself with the essential accom- 

 plishments of the past, to be sure ; and the longer time endures, with 

 its annual additions to these accomplishments, the more preparation 



