ft 

 352 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



done to overcome this jealousy, and to make the mass of 

 the people outside aware of the value of these institutions 

 to the Commonwealth, and of the value of scientific in- 

 quiries and pursuits as related to commerce and manufac- 

 tures, and to all productive industry. A just appreciation 

 of what he has done cannot be had without taking the 

 view from this position. Professor Silliman's celebrity as 

 a scientific man was gained not so much by what he did in 

 the way of original exploration and discovery, as* by his 

 skill in teaching and diffusing science, and especially by 

 the success of his endeavors to create an interest among 

 all intelligent people in the particular departments com- 

 mitted to his charge. It is chiefly as a teacher of what 

 other men had discovered that he did his great work for 

 science. I think that many gentlemen here especially 

 those whose memories of College life are thirty years old 

 and upward will agree with me in saying that, to the 

 students of those days, the hearing of Professor Silliman's 

 lectures on chemistry was a definite era in their intellectual 

 development. My mind, since I heard those lectures and 

 saw the illustrative experiments, has never been the same 

 that it was before. They opened before me a new volume 

 of the great book of Nature ; they revealed to me a new 

 aspect of the material universe. I had studied, after a 

 fashion, Enfield's " Natural Philosophy," and had some 

 rude conception of matter considered in its mechanical 

 aspects and relations. But when he opened his volume 

 of the great book, which it is the attempt of all physical 

 science to interpret, I felt that a new light was thrown upon 

 every material thing in Nature. Thenceforward, every- 

 thing in the universe of matter from the mote in the 

 sunbeam to the sun itself, or the remotest star was asso- 

 ciated with thoughts of analysis and synthesis, and of ele- 

 mentary atoms and forces. Assuming that others were 

 charmed and enlightened as I was, I may say that the 

 effect of those lectures on the hearers was lifelong, enter- 



