ON THE STUDY OF PHYSICS. 231 
stream through them, and observes the operation of his 
own character evidenced in the elevation of theirs it 
would be idle to talk of the position of such a man being 
honorable. It is a blessed position. The man is a bless- 
ing to himself and to all around him. Such men, I be- 
lieve, are to be found in England, and it behoves those 
who busy themselves with the mechanics of education at 
the present day, to seek them out. For no matter what 
means of culture may be chosen, whether physical or 
philological, success must ever mainly depend upon the 
amount of life, love, and earnestness, which the teacher 
himself brings with him to his vocation. 
Let me again, and finally, remind you that the claims 
of that science which finds in me to-day its unripened 
advocate, are those of the logic of Nature upon the reason 
of her child that its disciplines, as an agent of culture, 
are based upon the natura' relations subsisting befween 
Man and the universe of which he forms a part. On the 
one side, we have the apparently lawless shifting of 
phenomena; on the other side, mind, which requires law 
for its equilibrium, and through its own indestructible 
instincts, as well as through the teachings of experience, 
knows that these phenomena are reducible to law. To 
chasten this apparent chaos is a problem which man has 
set before him. The world was built in order: and to us 
are trusted the will and power to discern its harmonies, 
and to make them the lessons of our lives. From the 
cradle to the grave we are surrounded with objects which 
provoke inquiry. Descending for a moment from this high 
plea to considerations which lie closer to us as a nation 
as a land of gas and furnaces, of steam and electricity: as 
a land which science, practically applied, has made great 
in peace and mighty in war: I ask you whether this " land 
of old and just renown" has not a right to expect from 
her institutions a culture more in accordance with her 
present needs than that supplied by declension and con- 
jugation? And if the tendency should be to lower the 
estimate of science, by regarding it exclusively as the 
instrument of material prosperity, let it be this high mis- 
sion of our universities to furnish the proper counterpoise 
bv pointing out its nobler uses lifting the national mind 
to the contemplation of it as the last development of that 
''increasing purpose " which runs through the ages and 
widens the thoughts of men. 
