414 FRAGMENTS OF 



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, bivt 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 pre-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 tho 

 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 arc warmed, I. ho 

 detent is lifted, and an outflow of light immediately begins. 

 I know not how many of you may be in the condition of 



