122 On the Campus 



patronage so munificent and endowment so unlimited 

 from the treasury of the State ? Surely your science is 

 immensely indebted, but what has she to show on the 

 credit side? What has science done? What is she 

 doing in the world? 



Now these questions are well put: they are real, and 

 their consideration may be well worth our attentive 

 examination, even though the questioner, as here related, 

 be hypothetical and imaginary. Nay, the questioner has 

 his place among us ; there are men quite conversant with 

 modern life, who even yet are inclined to state the prob- 

 lem in the query of old: "To what purpose is this 

 waste?" 



In the brief space assigned me on the present pro- 

 gramme, I may not hope to answer such questions in 

 their fullest scope. The answer is vast, far-reaching as 

 our present human experience, and touches in one way or 

 another the whole compass of modern living. In fact, 

 the answer is two-fold: 



In part, open and read of all men; in part now only 

 dimly seen, to be reckoned up only by some future stu- 

 dent who shall prove capable of weighing and rightly 

 estimating the great impulses in the intellectual progress 

 of mankind. The return for our investment is, there- 

 fore, two-fold, just as there are two ways in which any 

 obligation may be met the debt may be paid in kind, 

 or it may be resolved in service rendered. 



In the first place, then, science pays back her cost in 

 kind; dollar for dollar, a thousand-fold. Let us look 

 at one or two examples. 



The chemist taught Henry Bessemer of England the 



