34 PROFESSORS AND PRACTICAL MEN 
the direction of our university as a whole, and of these special 
departments in particular, the active co-operation of men 
of business and of representatives of the particular industries 
concerned. 
I do not look upon these steps as a gracious concession, still 
less as a sordid opportunism. I believe that they secure the 
best interests of thought as surely as I hope they will serve 
the most immediate needs of work. 
No one who has studied the history of science can be 
ignorant of the fact that science has its roots and has gained 
its greatest impulse in the practical avocations of mankind. 
Chemistry was born in foundries and pharmacies, and nearly 
every great advance can be traced to some industrial impulse. 
I suppose the greatest achievements in chemistry were those 
of Lavoisier. How did they arise? I believe I am not 
wrong in saying that it was in the preparation of his prize 
essay on the best mode of lighting the streets of Paris. 
Beginning with a consideration of the best form of lamp, 
the most effective form of reflector, the most suitable shape 
of oil-container, Lavoisier passed to the study of combustion, 
and, finding organic things like oil and tallow too complex 
to reveal the fundamental nature of the process, he betook 
himself to simpler things like phosphorus and zinc; and so 
he was led to the train of discoveries which constitute the 
foundations of modern chemistry. ‘It was’,as M. le Chatelier 
has said, ‘this constant preoccupation with practical questions 
that enabled Lavoisier to escape without effort from the fictions 
and conventions amid which contemporary chemists were 
merely marking-time.’ 
I have given you but one of innumerable examples to 
illustrate a truth that we who profess science should never 
be permitted to forget, and to assure you that I regard the 
close association of universities with the business world as 
of enormous advantage to the universities. We have in this, 
