May 23, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



781 



interests of his party and not the interests 

 of his country; and I discovered, during 

 my experience in the House of Commons in 

 England, that a legislative assembly is the 

 worst place in the Avorld for the discovery 

 of abstract truth. 



Or, take the case of the lawyer. So far 

 from seeking to discover the truth, in one 

 half of the cases which he conducts, he is 

 endeavoring to obscure the truth. Or, even 

 take the case of the artist or the literary 

 man, who has a subject to work upon, de- 

 lightful and interesting in itself, in evoking 

 from the stone, or by colors, shapes or 

 forms of beauty, which will far outlive 

 him; but these forms of beauty will profit 

 him very little if they do not commend 

 themselves to the popular tastes, and he is 

 constantly under the temptation of doing 

 something less good than he wishes, in 

 order to meet the tastes of his patrons. 



It is the man of science who has the 

 really happy life. He is engaged in the 

 discovery of the truth, and nothing but 

 truth. The applause of the multitude is 

 nothing to him. He is working for a mis- 

 tress more exalted than any popular as- 

 sembly or any multitude that we can con- 

 ceive of. He is working for Truth herself, 

 and for the future. He is consecrating his 

 efforts to the highest task that God can lay 

 before man, and in that he needs nothing 

 but the sense of what he is adding to the 

 sum of human knowledge, and he has the 

 incomparable pleasure of feeling that the 

 more he knows, the more the immense ocean 

 of knowledge stretches itself out before 

 him. The further he outlines any path 

 into the untrodden solitudes of ignorance, 

 and the more he blazes those paths and 

 makes them paths of knowledge, the more 

 he sees other paths branch out before him, 

 leading further and further away into the 

 realms which others after him will traverse. 



In these things, friends, there are ele- 



ments of pleasure and delight, elements 

 also of independence, which I think no 

 other profession can equal. I was tempted 

 to add one other charm which your life 

 has. It is the charm of poverty. I have 

 sometimes felt inclined to wish, Mr. Vice- 

 President, that Congress was a little more 

 liberal to the scientific men who are work- 

 ing for Uncle Sam. But perhaps they are 

 to be congratulated on being free from 

 those temptations which beset wealth. 

 Poverty, like other things, is good if you 

 have not too much of it, because it saves 

 one from the temptation of forgetting the 

 end to the means, the temptation to which 

 most of us, and, above all, those who are in 

 search of wealth, succumb. You keep the 

 end always before you, and you proportion 

 your life to that end. 



Still, I think you might, with advantage, 

 not only to you, but, what is far more impor- 

 tant, to the whole country — and it ought to 

 be possible in a wealthy country like this — 

 provide upon a more ample scale for those 

 who follow science, and give science a more 

 exalted position, by freeing the scientific 

 man from any thought of domestic anxiety. 



You enjoy in this country — I speak here 

 of particular branches of science — some 

 things which we, in England, greatly envy. 

 Think of what the geologist or the botanist 

 has before him here ! We have been work- 

 ing for one hundred and fifty years upon 

 the geology, and for more than that upon 

 the botany, of our little island; but here 

 you have the whole continent open to you, 

 and any man of science on these subjects 

 can make a reputation for himself by new 

 work in new fields, such as is impossible 

 for us in outgrown Europe. 



Gentlemen, one word I venture to say 

 about the scientific bodies of the continent 

 of Europe. We have, in the Roj^al Society, 

 the oldest of those bodies, and one which, I 

 think, has always maintained the level 



