234 LIFE OF PROFESSOR CHESTER DEWEY. 



or were in the process of formation. For this reason his hibors were 

 the more self-denying. 



He also represents two departments of the teacher's profession. He 

 went from a college chair, in which he had been eminently successful, 

 into an academy, and from an academy back again to a college 

 chair, simply at the call of duty, apparently without a thought that dig- 

 nity or position was in the slightest degree affected by either transfer. 

 His only desire was to ascertain the position in which he could be most 

 useful to his fellow-men. In view of these facts in our friend's career, I 

 cannot forbear to note the lesson which they convey to our profession. 

 As teachers, we should always bear in mind that we belong to a brother- 

 hood laboring in a common work for a common end ; that rank and dig- 

 nity among us do not depend upon the accidents of position, but upon 

 high attainments and faithful services, no matter wliere those attain- 

 ments are made or those services rendered. In this respect the legal 

 l^rofession gives us a worthy example. From the Chief Justice of the 

 United States to the village attorney, all lawyers, as members of the 

 profession, are brethren, and erpial. Let us frown upon any attempt to 

 separate our profession into sects and orders, on the false assumption 

 that there are, or can be, rival dignities or clashing interests among 

 those engaged in the high and benevolent work of training the minds 

 and characters of the young. 



As a man of science. Dr. Dewey belongs to a class whose abilities and 

 public services are liable, in our time, to be overlooked or underrated. 

 1 refer to those men who were pioneers in the work of cultivating and 

 popularizing natural science in our country. When Amos Eaton, Parker 

 Cleaveland, Robert Hare, Benjamin Silliman, Edward Hitchcock, and 

 Chester Dewey began their labors, the natural sciences, as they are now 

 understood, had in this country hardly an existence. Since that time the 

 discoveries and investigations upon which they rest have, in great part, 

 been made or matured. 



Dr. Dewey left college in 1806. Just about this period that remark- 

 able impulse was given to scientific inquiry, resulting in an almost 

 simultaneous development of chemistry, zoology, crystalography, botany, 

 and geology, which rendered the first half of the nineteenth century so 

 supremely illustrious. What are now elementary truths, finding a place 

 in every text-book, were then either undiscovered or new and strange, 

 waiting the time of their acceptance or verification. The very year of 

 Dr. Dewey's graduation, Davy made his discovery of the metallic bases 

 of the alkalies, and promulgated the electro-chemical theory by extend- 

 ing and applying the discoveries of Galvani and Volta. A few years 

 previous, Lavoisier and his associates had published their new system of 

 chemical nomenclature. In 4807, Dalton's law of chemical equivalents 

 and definite proportions was first given to the world. Hiiuy, Weiss, and 

 Mohs published their new views on crystalography from 1800 to 1809, 

 while Berzelius and others were at the same time developing the chem- 



