A PLEA FOR PUEE SCIENCE 603 



It is not those in this country who receive the largest salary, and have 

 positions in the richest colleges, who have advanced their subject the 

 most: men receiving the highest salaries, and occupying the professor's 

 chair, are to-day doing absolutely nothing in pure science, but are striv- 

 ing by the commercial applications of their science to increase their 

 already large salary. Such pursuits, as I have said before, are honorable 

 in their proper place; but the duty of a professor is to advance his science, 

 and to set an example of pure and true devotion to it which shall demon- 

 strate to his students and the world that there is something high and 

 noble worth living for. Money-changers are often respectable men, and 

 yet they were once severely rebuked for carrying on their trade in the 

 court of the temple. 



"Wealth does not constitute a university, buildings do not: it is the 

 men who constitute its faculty, and the students who learn from them. 

 It is the last and highest step which the mere student takes. He goes 

 forth into the world, and the height to which he rises has been influenced 

 by the ideals which he has consciously or unconsciously imbibed in his 

 university. If the professors under whom he has studied have been 

 high in their profession, and have themselves had high ideals; if they 

 have considered the advance of their particular subject their highest 

 work in life, and are themselves honored for their intellect throughout 

 the world, the student is drawn toward that which is highest, and 

 ever after in life has high ideals. But if the student is taught by what 

 are sometimes called good teachers, and teachers only, who know little 

 more than the student, and who are often surpassed and even despised 

 by him, no one can doubt the lowered tone of his mind. He finds that 

 by his feeble efforts he can surpass one to whom a university has given 

 its highest honor; and he begins to think that he himself is a born 

 genius, and the incentive to work is gone. He is great by the side of 

 the molehill, and does not know any mountain to compare himself with. 



A university should have not only great men in its faculty, but have 

 numerous minor professors and assistants of all kinds, and should 

 encourage the highest work, if for no other reason than to encourage 

 the student to his highest efforts. 



But, assuming that the professor has high ideals, wealth such as only 

 a large and high university can command is necessary to allow him the 

 fullest development. 



And this is specially so in our science of physics. In the early days 

 of physics and chemistry, many of the fundamental experiments could 

 be performed with the simplest apparatus. And so we often find the 



