56 GRAHAM LUSK 



in 1870, in which he says that he is considering giving up his lectures 

 during the summer semester upon the subject of animal chemistry and 

 nutrition and continues, "I find so little to interest me in what others 

 are doing in this subject I lose all desire to take part in it. They per- 

 form nothing but small experiments which lead to nothing. Modern 

 physiologists lack a great idea 'upon which all investigations depend." 



Wilhelm Ostwald comments that this is the usual experience of parents 

 with their children, and is the greater the more capable and important 

 the children become. 



It may be of interest in this connection that I heard Voit tell my 

 father in 1891 that there were no young, promising physiologists of about 

 forty in Germany at that date, a generalization which would have in- 

 cluded Rubner (born 1854), Kossel (bdrn 1853) and Hofmeister (born 

 1850). 



The happy ideas obtained as the result of Liebig's walk between 

 Berchtesgaden and the Konigssee recalls the statement made. by Helm- 

 holtz at a festival given in honor of his seventieth birthday, in which 

 he told that he had never had a great thought come to him at his desk 

 nor when he was tired nor after taking a glass of wine, but usually when 

 he was walking in the garden thinking of other things. 



All the quotations of Liebig's later views are from writings pub- 

 lished in the year of the Franco-Prussian. War of 1870. In his "Thier- 

 chemie" of 1840 and in several other of his publications at that period 

 occur the following memorable words : "Culture is the economy of power, 

 the sciences teach how to produce the greatest results by the simplest 

 means with the least expenditure of energy. Every unnecessary use of 

 energy, every waste of power in agriculture, industry, science, or in state- 

 craft is characteristic of crudeness or lack of culture." 



Concerning the results of the conflict of 1870, Liebig moralized as 

 follows: "It was a battle between knowledge and science on one side 

 and empiricism and routine on the other, in which, as in agriculture, 

 knowledge won." 



Hear this realizing cry of Pasteur (Vallery-Radot, 1902) which fol- 

 lowed the defeat of France in 1870 concerning the "forgetfulness, dis- 

 dain even, that France had had for great intellectual men, especially in 

 the realm of exact science." He says, "Whilst Germany was multiplying 

 her universities, establishing between them the most salutary emulation, 

 bestowing honors and consideration on the masters and the doctors, cre- 

 ating vast laboratories amply supplied with the most perfect instruments, 

 France, enervated by revolutions, ever vainly seeking the best form of 

 government, was giving but careless attention to her establishments for 

 higher education. 



"The cultivation of science in its highest expression is perhaps even 

 more necessary to the moral condition of a nation than to its material 

 prosperity." 



