SIX LECTURES ON LIGHT. 



through an ardor for knowledge. Those 

 who applied them could not have discovered 

 them; those who discovered them had no in- 

 clination to pursue them to a practical end. 

 Engaged in the high regions whither their 

 thoughts had carried them, they hardly per- 

 ceived these practical issues, though born of 

 their own deeds. These rising workshops, 

 these peopled colonies, those ships which fur- 

 row the seas this abundance, this luxury, 

 this tumult all th's comes from discoverers 

 in science., and it all remains strange to 

 them. At the point where science merges 

 into practice, they abandon it; it concerns 

 them no more." 



When the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Ply- 

 mouth Rock, and when Penn made his treaty 

 with the Indians, the new-comers had to 

 bui'.d their houses, to chasten the earth into 

 cultivation, and to take care of their souls. 

 In such a community, science, in its more 

 abstract forms, was not to be thought cf. 

 And, at the present hour, when your hardy 

 Western pioneers stand face to face with 

 stubborn Nature, piercing the mountains 

 and subduing the forest and the prairie, the 

 pursuit of science, for its own sake, is not to 

 be expected. The first need of man is food 

 nnd shelter ; but a vast portion of this con- 

 tinent is already raised far beyond this need. 

 The gentlemen of New York, Brooklyn, Bos- 

 ton, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washing- 

 ton, have already built their houses, and very 

 beautiful they are ; they have also secured 

 their dinners, to the excellence of which I 

 can also bear testimony. They have, in 

 fact, reached that precise condition of well- 

 being and independence when a culture, as 

 } i^'h as humanity has yet reached, may be 

 justly demanded at their hands. They have 

 reached that maturity, as possessors of wealch 

 and leisure, when the investigator of natural 

 truth, for the truth's own sake, ought to find 

 among them promoters and protectors. 



Among the many grave problems before 

 them they have this to solve, whether a re- 

 public is able to foster the highest forms of 

 genius. You are familiar with the writings 

 of De Tocqueville, and must be aware of the 

 intense sympathy which he felt for your insti- 

 tutions ; and this sympathy is all the more 

 valuable, from the philosophic candor with 

 which he points out, not only your merits, 

 but your defects and dangers. Now, if I 

 come here to speak of science in America in 

 a critical and captious spirit, an invisible 

 radiation from my words and manner will 

 enable you to find me out, and will guide 

 your treatment of me to-night. But, if I, in 

 no unfriendly spirit in a spirit, indeed, th~ 

 reverse of unfriendly venture to repeat be- 

 fore you what this great historian and analyst 

 of democratic institutions said of America, I 

 am persuaded that you will hear me out. He 

 wrote some three-and-twenty years ago, and 

 perhaps would not write the same to-day ; 

 but it will do nobody any harm to have his I 



words repeated, and, if necessary, laid to 

 heart. In a work published in 1 850, he says : 

 " It must be confessed that, among the civil- 

 ized peoples of our ^ge, there are few in 

 which the highest sciences have made so 

 little progress as in the United States."* 

 He declares his conviction that, had you been 

 alone in the universe, you would speedily 

 have discovered that you cannot long make 

 progress in practical science, without culti- 

 vating theoretic science at the same time. 

 But, according to De Tocqueville, you are 

 ' not thus alone. He refuses to separate 

 America from its ancestral home ; and it is 

 here, he contends, that you collect the treas- 

 ures of the intellect, without taking the 

 trouble to create them. 



De Tocqueville evidently doubts the ca- 

 pacity of a democracy to 1 osier genius as it 

 was fostered in the ancient aristocracies. 

 " The future," he says, "will prove whether 

 the passion for profound knowledge, so rare 

 and so fruitful, can be born and developed 

 so readily in democractic societies as in aris- 

 tocracies. As for me," he continues, " I 

 can hardly believe it." He speaks of the un- 

 quiet feverishness of democratic commu- 

 nities, not in times of great excitement, for 

 such times may give an extraordinary impe- 

 tus to ideas, but in times of peace. There 

 is then, he says, "a small and uncomfortable 

 agaitation, a sort of incessant attrition of 

 man against man, which troubles and dis- 

 tracts the mind without imparting to it cither 

 animation or elevation." It rests with you 

 to prove whether these things are necessarily 

 so whether the highest scientific genius can- 

 not find in the midst of you a tranquil homo. 

 I should be loath to gainsay so keen an ob- 

 server and so profound a political writer, but, 

 since my arrival in this country, I have been 

 unable to see anything in the constitution of 

 society to prevent a Sstudent with the rocl; ot 

 the matter in him from bestowing the most 

 steadfast devotion on pure science. If great 

 scientific results are not achieved in Ameri- 

 ca, it is not to the small agitations of society 

 that I should be disposed to ascribe the de- 

 fect, but to the fact that the men among you 

 who possess the endo.vments necessary for 

 scientific inquiry are laden with duties of ad- 

 ministration or tuition so heavy as to be 

 utterly incompatible with the continuous and 

 tranquil meditation which original investi- 

 gation demands. It may well be aske 

 whether Henry would have been transformer 

 into an administrator, or whether Draper 

 would have forsaken science to write history, 

 if the original investigator had been honored 

 as he ought to be in this land ? I hardly 

 think they would. Still I do not think thia 



* II faut reconnaitre, que parmis les peuples civil- 

 ises de nos jours, il en esc p'eu chez qui les hautes 

 sciences aient fait moins de progres qu'aux Etats- 

 Unis, ou qui aient fourni moins de grands artis r es, 

 de poetesillustres, et de celebrcs ecrivains. (Ds U 

 Democratic en Amerique, etc., toius ii., p. 36.) 



