ON THE STUDY OF PHYSICS. 231 



stream through them, and observes the operation of his 

 own character evidenced in the elevation of theirs it 

 would be idle to talk of the position of such a man being 

 honorable. It is a blessed position. The man is a bless- 

 ing to himself and to all around him. Such men, I be- 

 lieve, are to be found in England, and it behoves those 

 who busy themselves with the mechanics of education at 

 the present day, to seek them out. For no matter what 

 means of culture may be chosen, whether physical or 

 philological, success must ever mainly depend upon the 

 amount of life, love, and earnestness, which the teacher 

 himself brings with him to his vocation. 



Let me again, and finally, remind you that the claims 

 of that science which finds in me to-day its unripened 

 advocate, are those of the logic of Nature upon the reason 

 of her child that its disciplines, as an agent of culture, 

 are based upon the natura 1 relations subsisting between 

 Man and the universe of which he forms a part. On the 

 one side, we have the apparently lawless shifting of 

 phenomena; on the other side, mind, which requires law 

 for its equilibrium, and through its own indestructible 

 instincts, as well as through the teachings of experience, 

 knows that these phenomena are reducible to law. To 

 chasten this apparent chaos is a problem which man has 

 set before him. The world was built in order: and to us 

 are trusted the will and power to discern its harmonies, 

 and to make them the lessons of our lives. From the 

 cradle to the grave we are surrounded with objects which 

 provoke inquiry. Descending for a moment from this high 

 plea to considerations which lie closer to us as a nation 

 as a land of gas and furnaces, of steam and electricity: as 

 a land which science, practically applied, has made great 

 in peace and mighty in war: I ask you whether this " land 

 of old and just renown" has not a right to expect from 

 her institutions a culture more in accordance with her 

 present needs than that supplied by declension and con- 

 jugation? And if the tendency should be to lower the 

 estimate of science, by regarding it exclusively as the 

 instrument of material prosperity, let it be this high mis- 

 sion of our universities to furnish the proper counterpoise 

 by pointing out its nobler uses lifting the national mind 

 to the contemplation of it as the last development of that 

 "increasing purpose " which runs through the ages ancl 

 widens the thoughts of men. 



