SIX LECTURES ON LI3I-IT. 



initiated, they might well appear as big 

 children playing with not Very amusing toys. 

 It is so to this hour. Could you watch the 

 true investigator your Henry or your Dra- 

 per, ior example in his laboratory, unless 

 animated by his spirit, you could hardly un- 

 derstand what keeps him there. Many of 

 the objects which rivet his attention might 

 appear to you utterly tiivial ; and, if you were 

 cO step forward and ask him what is the use of 

 his work, the chances are that you would 

 confound him. He might not be able to 

 express the 1:33 of it in intelligible terms. 

 He might not be able to assure you that it 

 will put a dollar into the pocket of any 

 human being living or to come. That 

 scientific discovery may put not only dollars 

 into the potkets of individuals, but millions 

 into the exchequers or nations, the history of 

 science amply proves ; but the hope of its 

 doing so never was and never can be the 

 motive power of the investigator. 



I know that 1 run some risk in speaking 

 thus before practical men. 1 kno,v what De 

 Tocqueville says of you. " The man of the 

 North," he says, "has not only experience, 

 but knowledge. He, however s does not care 

 for science as a pleasure, and only embraces 

 i with avidity when it leads to useful appli- 

 cations." But what, I would ask, are the 

 hopes of useful applications which have 

 drawn you so many times to this place in 

 ipite of snow-drifts and biting cold? What, 

 1 may ask, is the origin of that kindness 

 which drew me from my work in London to 

 address you here, and which, if I permitted 

 it, would send me home a millionaire ? Not 

 because I had taught you to make a single 

 cent by science, am I among you to-night, 

 but because I tried to the best of my ability 

 co present science to the world s an intellec- 

 tual good. Surely no two terms were ever 

 so distorted and misapplied with refe.ence to 

 man in his higher relations as these terms 

 ustful and practical. As if there were no 

 nakedness of the mind to be clothed as well 

 as naktdness of the body no hunger and 

 thirst of the intellect to satisfy. Let us ex- 

 pand the definitions of these terms until thty 

 embrace all the needs of man, his highest in- ! 

 teliectual needs inclusive. It is specially on ' 

 this ground of its administering to the higher I 

 needs of intellect, it is mainly because I be- 

 lieve it to be wholesome as a source of know- 

 ledge, and as a means of discipline, that 1 

 virge the claims of science this evening upon 

 your attention. 



But. with reference to material needs and 

 joys, surely pure science has also a word to 

 say. People sometimes s-pc-ak as if steam had 

 not been studied before James Watt, or elec- 

 tricity before Wheatstone and Morse ; where- 

 as, in point of fact, Watt and Wheatstone 

 and Morse, with all their practicality, were 

 the mere outcome of antecedent forces, which 

 acted without reference to practical ends. 

 This also, I think, me its a moment's 



J tion. You arc delighted, and with good 

 (reason, wilh your electric telegrrphs, prcud 

 of your steam-engines and your factories, 

 and charmed with the productions of pho- 

 tography. You see daily, with just elation, 

 the creation of new forms of industry 

 new powers of adding to the wealth and 

 comfort of society. Industrial England is 

 heaving with forces tending to this end, and 

 the pulse of industry beats still stronger in 

 the United States. And yet, when analyzed, 

 what are industrial America and industrial 

 England? If you can tolerate freedom of 

 speech on my part, I will answer this ques- 

 tion by an illustration. Strip a strong arm, 

 and regard the knotted muscles when the 

 hand is clenched and the arm bent. Is this 

 exhibition of energy the work of the muscle 

 alone ? By no means. The muscle is the 

 channel of an influence, without which it 

 would be as powerless as a lump of plastic 

 dough. It is the delicate unseen nerve that 

 unlocks the power of the muscle. And, 

 without those filaments of genius which have 

 been shot like nerves through the body of 

 society by the original discoverer, industrial 

 America and industrial England would, I 

 fear, be very much in the condition of that 

 plastic dough. 



At the, present time there is a cry in Eng- 

 land for technical education, and it is the ex- 

 pression of a true national want ; but there 

 is no cry for original investigation. Still 

 without this, as surely as the stream dwindles 

 when the spring dries, so surely will "tech- 

 nical education" lose all force of growth, all 

 power of reproduction. Our great investi- 

 gators have given us sufficient work for a 

 time , but, if their spirit die out, we shall 

 find ourselves eventually in the condition of 

 those Chinese mentioned by Ue Tocqueville. 

 who, having forgotten the scientific origin of 

 what they did, were at length compelled to 

 copy without variation the inventions of an 

 ancestry who, wiser than themselves, had 

 drawn their inspiration direct from Nature. 



To keep society as regards science in 

 healthy play, three classes of workers are 

 necessary : Firstly, the investigator of natural 

 truth, whose vocation it is to pursue that 

 truth, and extend the field of discovery for 

 the truth's own sake, and without reference 

 to practical ends. Secondly, the teacher of 

 natural truth, whose vocation it is to give 

 public diffusion to the knowledge already won 

 by the discoverer. Thirdly, the applier of 

 natural truth, whose vocation it is to make 

 scientific knowledge available for the needs, 

 comforts, and luxuries of life. These three 

 classes ought to coexist and interact. Now, 

 the popular notion of science, both in this 

 country and in England, often relates, not to 

 science strictly so called, but to ths applica- 

 tions of science. Such applications, espe- 

 cially on this continent, are so astounding 

 they spread themselves so largely 2nd um- 

 bragcously before the public eye as to shut 



