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304 NATURE 
Mayer, Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, President F. A. P. 
Barnard, Rev. Dr. Hitchcock, Rev. Dr. H. C. Potter, Dr. 
A. Flint, Dr. Hammond, Rev. Dr. Osgood, A. Appleton, 
G. S. Appleton, Judge Brady, Dr. H. Draper, V. Botta, 
J. C. Draper, Judge Daly, the Hon. E. D. Morgan, B. 
Silliman, Prof. G. F. Barker, of Yale College, Gen. 
Franklin, D. Van Nostrand, H. S. Kendrick, Prof. 
Chandler, Prof. S. F. Baird, of the Smithsonian Institute, 
Prof Michie, Prof. Pompelly, E. L. Godkin, Fred, Law 
Olmsted, Prof. W. H. Chandler, of Columbia College, 
Sterry Hunt, C. W. Field, Gen. Myers, E. L. Youmans, 
A. S. Hewitt, Wilson G. Hunt, Dr. Sims, Col. Dwight, 
J. B. Scribner, W. H. Appleton. : 
There were several very happy after-dinner speeches, 
by men of various professions and opinions. We present 
our readers with a few extracts from the speech of Prof 
Tyndall. ; 
Referring to the interest shown in his lectures, he said : 
— Every such display of public sympathy must have its 
prelude, during which men’s minds are prepared, a desire 
for knowledge created, an intelligent curiosity aroused. 
Then in the nick of time comes a person who, though but 
an accident, touches a spring which permits tendency to 
flow into fact, and public feeling to pass from the poten- 
tial to the actual. . The interest displayed has really been 
the work of years, and the chief merit rests with those 
who were wise enough to discern that, as regards physics, 
the detent might be removed, and the public sympathy 
for that department of science permitted to show itself. 
Among the foremost of those who saw this must be 
reckoned my indefatigable friend Prof. Youmans. Inno 
other way can I account for my four months’ experience 
in the United States. . . To no othercountry is the culti- 
vation of science in its highest forms of more importance 
than to yours. In no other country would it exert a more 
benign and elevating influence. What, then, is to be done 
toward so desirable a consummation? Here I think you 
must take counsel of your leading scientific men, and they 
are not unlikely to recommend something of this kind. 
I think, as regards physical science, they are likely to 
assure you that it is not what I may call the statical ele- 
ment of buildings that you require so muchas the dynami- 
cal element of brains. Making use as far as possible of 
existing institutions, let chairs be founded, sufficiently but 
not luxuriously endowed, which shall have original re- 
search for their main object and ambition. With such 
vital centres among you, all your establishments of educa- 
tion would feel their influence ; without such centres even 
your primary instruction will never flourish as it ought. 
I would not, as a general rule, wholly sever tuition from 
investigation, but, as in the institution to which I belong, 
the one ought to be made subservient to the other. The 
Royal Institution gives lectures—indeed-it lives in part 
by lectures, though mainly by the contributions of its 
members, and the bequests ofits friends. But the main 
feature of its existence—a feature never lost sight of by 
its wise and honourable Board of Managers—is that it is 
a school of research and discovery. And though a by- 
law gives them the power to do so, for the twenty years 
during which I have been there no manager or member 
of the institution has ever interfered with my researches. 
It is this wise freedom, accompanied by a never-failing 
sympathy, extended to the great men who preceded me, 
that has given to the Royal Institution its imperishable 
renown. 
“T have said that I could not wholly sever tuition from 
investigation, and I should like to add one word to this 
remark, In your chairs of investigation let such work as 
that in which I have been lately engaged be reduced to a 
minimum. Look jealously upon the man who is fond of 
wandering from his true vocation to appear on public 
platforms. The practice is absolutely destructive of ori- 
ginal work of a high order. Nowand then the discoverer, 
when he has anything important to tell, may appear with 
benefit to himself and the world. But as a general rule 
he must leave the work of public lecturing to others. This 
may appear to you a poor return for the plaudits with 
which my own efforts have been received; but these 
efforts had a special aim. My first duty toward you, 
moreover, is to be true, and what,] say here is the inexo- 
rable truth. 
“As to the source of the funds necessary for founding 
the chairs to which I have referred it is not for me to offer 
an opinion. Without raising the disputed question of 
State aid, in this country it is possible to do a great deal 
without it. As I said in my lectures, the willingness of 
American citizens to throw their fortunes into the cause of 
public education is without a parallcl in my experience. 
Hitherto their efforts have been directed to the practical 
side of science, and this is why I sought in my lectures to 
show the dependence of practice upon principles, On the 
ground, then, of mere practical, material utility, pure 
science ought to be cultivated. But assuredly among 
your men of wealth there are those willing to listen to an 
appeal on higher grounds, to whom, as American citizens, 
it will be a pride to fashion American men so as to enable 
them to take their places among those great ones men- 
tioned in my lectures. Into this plea I would pour all my 
strength. Not as a servant of Mammon do I ask you to 
take science to your hearts, but as the strengthener and 
enlightener of the mind of man. 
“ Might I now address a word or two to those who in the" 
ardour of youth feel themselves drawn toward science as 
a vocation. They must, if possible, increase their fidelity 
to original research, prizing far more than the possession 
of wealth an honourable standing in science. They must, 
I think, be prepared at times to suffer a little for the sake 
of scientific righteousness, not refusing, should occasion 
demand it, to live low and lie hard to achieve the object 
of their lives. I do not here urge anythingupon others that 
I should have been unwilling to do myself when young. 
Let me give you a line of personal history. In 1848, 
wishing to improve myself in science, I went to the Uni- 
versity of Marburg—the same old town in which my 
great namesake, when even poorer than myself, published 
his translation of the Bible. I lodged in the plainest 
manner, in a street which, perhaps, bore an appropriate 
name while I dwelt upon it. It was called the Ketzerbach 
—the heretic’s brook—from a little historic rivulet run- 
ning through it. I wished to keep myself clean and 
hardy ; so I purchased a cask and had it cut in two by a 
carpenter. Half that cask, filled with spring water over 
night, was placed in my small bedroom, and never during 
the years that I spent there, in winter or in summer, did 
the clock of the beautiful Elizabethekirche, which was 
close at hand, finish striking the hour of six in the morn- 
ing before I was in my tub, Fora good portion of the 
time I rose an hour and a half earlier than this, working 
by lamp-light at the differential calculus when the world 
was slumbering round me. And I risked this breach in 
my pursuits and this expenditure of time and money, not 
because I had any definite prospect of material profit in 
view, but because I thought the cultivation of the intellect 
important— because, moreover, I loved my work, and en- 
tertained the sure and certain hope that, armed with know- 
ledge, one can successfully fight one’s way through the 
world. It is with the view of giving others the chance that 
I then enjoyed that I propose to devote the surplus of the 
money which you have so generously poured in upon me, to 
the education of young philosophers in Germany. I ought 
not, for their sake, to omit one additional motive by which 
I was upheld at the time here referred to—that was a 
sense of duty. Every young man of high aims must, I 
think, have a spice of this principle within him. There 
are sure to be hours in his life when his outlook will be 
dark, his work difficult, and his intellectual future uncer- 
tain. Over such periods, when the stimulus of success is 
absent, he must be carried by his sense of duty. It may 
{fed..20, 18973, 7 
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