594 HENRY A. EOWLAND 



elation. Fain would I speak pleasant words to you on this subject; 

 fain would I recount to you the progress made in this subject by my 

 countrymen, and their noble efforts to understand the order of the 

 universe. But I go out to gather the grain ripe to the harvest, and I 

 find only tares. Here and there a noble head of grain rises above the 

 weeds; but so few are they, that I find the majority of my countrymen 

 know them not, but think that they have a waving harvest, while it is 

 only one of weeds after all. American science is a thing of the future, 

 and not of the present or past; and the proper course of one in my 

 position is to consider what must be done to create a science of physics 

 in this country, rather than to call telegraphs, electric lights, and such 

 conveniences, by the name of science. I do not wish to underrate the 

 value of all these things; the progress of the world depends on them, 

 and he is to be honored who cultivates them successfully. So also the 

 cook who invents a new and palatable dish for the table benefits the 

 world to a certain degree; yet we do not dignify him by the name of a 

 chemist. And yet it is not an uncommon thing, especially in American 

 newspapers, to have the applications of science confounded with pure 

 science; and some obscure American who steals the ideas of some great 

 mind of the past, and enriches himself by the application of the same 

 to domestic uses, is often lauded above the great originator of the idea, 

 who might have worked out hundreds of such applications, had his mind 

 possessed the necessary element of vulgarity. I have often been asked, 

 which was the more important to the world, pure or applied science. 

 To have the applications of a science, the science itself must exist. 

 Should we stop its progress, and attend only to its applications, we 

 should soon degenerate into a people like the Chinese, who have made 

 no progress for generations, because they have been satisfied with the 

 applications of science, and have never sought for reasons in what they 

 have done. The reasons constitute pure science. They have known 

 the application of gunpowder for centuries; and yet the reasons for its 

 peculiar action, if sought in the proper manner, would have developed 

 the science of chemistry, and even of physics, with all their numerous 

 applications. By contenting themselves with the fact that gunpowder 

 will explode, and seeking no farther, they have fallen behind in the 

 progress of the world; and we now regard this oldest and most numerous 

 of nations as only barbarians, and yet our own country is in this same 

 state. But we have done better, for we have taken the science of the 

 old world, and applied it to all our uses, accepting it like the rain of 

 heaven, without asking whence it came, or even acknowledging the 



