192 BIOGRAPHIES OF SCIENTIFIC MEN 



and when thanking the company for the addresses, he 

 remarked : 



You heap coals of fire on my head ; you reward me for having 

 enjoyed for fifty years the privilege of spending my time in the work 

 most congenial to me, and in the happiest of surroundings. You could 

 not do more for me if I had spent my life in hardships and dangers, 

 fighting for my country, or struggling to do good among masses of our 

 population, or working for the benefit of the people in public duty 

 voluntarily accepted. 



I feel profoundly grateful ; but when I think how infinitely little 

 is all that I have done, I cannot feel pride I only see the great kind- 

 ness of my scientific comrades, and of my friends in crediting me with 

 too much. One word characterizes the most strenuous of the efforts 

 for the advancement of science that I have made during fifty-five 

 years, and that word is failure. I know no more of electric and 

 magnetic force, or of the relations between ether, electricity, and ponder- 

 able matter, or of chemical affinity, than I knew and tried to teach 

 fifty years ago in my first session as professor. Something of sadness 

 must come of failure ; but in the pursuit of science inborn necessity to 

 make the effort brings with it much of the " certaminus gaudia," and 

 saves the naturalist from being wholly miserable, perhaps enables him 

 to be fairly happy in his daily work. And what splendid compensations 

 for philosophic failures have we had in the admirable discoveries by 

 observation and experiment of the properties of matter, and in the 

 exquisitely beneficent applications of science to the use of mankind, 

 with which these fifty years have so abounded. 



Two lessons are derived from the life-work of such a 

 man as Lord Kelvin. The theoretical speculations of the 

 philosopher, and the practical inventions of the scientist. 

 Science must, however, in the main be directed to the 

 actual service of man in his daily life. Science largely 

 determines national prosperity ; and in this respect Lord 

 Kelvin's inventions are of the highest order of usefulness. 



