41 4 PR A OMENTS F SUIKNGtf. 
with the spirit of modern science neither of them, indeed, 
friendly to that spirit has placed me here to-day. These 
men are the English Carlyle and the American Emerson. 
I must ever gratefully remember that through three long 
cold German winters Carlyle placed me in my tub, even 
when ice was on its surface, at five o'clock every morning 
not slavishly, but cheerfully, meeting each day's studies 
with a resolute will, determined whether- victor or van- 
quished not to shrink from difficulty. I never should have 
gone through Analytical Geometry and the Calculus had 
it not been for those men. I never should have become a 
physical investigator, and hence without them I should 
not have been here to-day. They told me what I ought to 
do in a way that caused me to do it, and all my consequent 
intellectual action is to be traced to this purely moral 
source. To Carlyle and Emerson I ought to add Fichte, 
the greatest representative of pure idealism. These three 
unscientific men made me a practical scientific worker. 
They called out " Act!" I hearkened to the summons, 
taking the liberty, however, of determining for myself the 
direction which effort was to take. 
And I may now cry -'Act!" but the potency of action 
must be yours. I may pull the trigger, but if the gun be 
not charged there is no result. We are creators in the 
intellectual world as little as in the physical. We may 
remove obstacles, and render latent capacities active, but 
we cannot suddenly change the nature of man. The " new 
birth " itself implies the pro-existence of a character which 
requires not to be created but brought forth. You cannot 
by any amount of missionary labor suddenly transform the 
savage into the civilized Christian. The improvement of 
man is secular not the work of an hour or of a day. But 
though indubitably bound by our organizations, no man 
knows what the potentialities of any human mind may be, 
requiring only release to be brought into action. There 
are in the mineral world certain crystals certain forms, 
for instance, of fluor-spar, which have lain darkly in the 
earth for ages, but which nevertheless have a potency of 
light locked up within them. In their case the potential 
has never become actual the light is in fact held back by 
a molecular detent. When these crystals are warmed, the 
detent is lifted, and an outflow of light immediately begins. 
I know not how many of you may be in the condition of 
