246 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. II., No. 29. 



the progress of his subject, and to do all in his power 

 to advance it, and when he is selected for these rea- 

 sons, then the position will be worth working for, 

 and the successful competitor will be honored accord- 

 ingly. The chivalric spirit which prompted Faraday 

 to devote his life to the study of nature may actuate 

 a few noble men to give their life to scientific work; 

 but, if we wijh to cultivate this highest class of men 

 in science, we must open a career for them worthy of 

 their efforts. 



Jenny Lind, with her beautiful voice, would have 

 cultivated it to some extent in her native village; 

 yet who would expect her to travel over the world, 

 and give concerts for nothing ? and how would she 

 have been able to do so if she had wished ? And so 

 the scientific man, whatever his natural talents, must 

 have instruments and a library, and a suitable and 

 respectable salary to live upon, before he is able to 

 exert himself to his full capacity. This is true of 

 advance in all the higher departments of human 

 learning, and yet something more is necessary. It is 

 not those in this country who receive the largest 

 salary, and have positions in the richest colleges, who 

 have advanced their subject the most: men receiving 

 the highest salaries, and occupying the professor's 

 chair, are to-day doing absolutely nothing in pure 

 science, but are striving by the commercial applica- 

 tions of their science to increase their already large 

 salary. Such pursuits, as I have said before, are 

 honorable in their proper place; but the duty of a 

 profcsscir is to advance his science, and to set an ex- 

 ample of pure and true devotion to it which shall 

 demonstrate to his students and the world that there 

 is something high and noble worth living for. Money- 

 changers are often respectable men, and yet they 

 were once severely rebuked for carrying on their trade 

 in the court of the temple. 



Wealth does not constitute a university, buildings 

 do not: it is the men who constitute its faculty, 

 and the students who learn from them. It is the 

 last and highest step which the mere student takes. 

 He goes forth into the world, and the height to which 

 he rises has been influenced by the ideals which 

 he has consciously or unconsciously imbibed in his 

 university. If the professors under whom he has 

 studied have been high in their profession, and have 

 themselves had high ideals; if they have considered 

 the advance of their particular subject their highest 

 work in life, and are themselves honored for their in- 

 tellect throughout the world, — the student is drawn 

 toward that which is highest, and ever after in 

 life has high ideals. But if the student is taught 

 by what are sometimes called good teachers, and 

 teachers only, who know little more than the student, 

 and who are often surpassed and even despised by 

 him, no one can doubt the lowered tone of his mind. 

 He finds that by his feeble efforts he can surjDass 

 one to whom a university has given its highest honor; 

 and he begins to think that he himself is a born 

 genius, and the incentive to work is gone. He is 

 great by the side of the molehill, and does not know 

 any mountain to compare himself with. 



A university should not only have great men in its 



faculty, but have numerous minor professors . and 

 assistants of all kinds, and should encourage the 

 highest work, if for no other reason than to encour- 

 age the student to his highest efforts. 



But, assuming that the professor has high ideals, 

 wealth such as only a large and high university can 

 command is necessary to allow him the fullest devel- 

 opment. 



And this is specially so in our science of physics. 

 In the early days of physics and chemistry, many of 

 the fundamental expeiiments could be performed 

 with the simplest apparatus. And so w-e often find 

 the names of Wollaston and Faraday mentioned as 

 needing scarcely any thing for their researches. 

 Much can even now be done with the simplest appar- 

 atus; and nobody, except the utterly incompetent, 

 need stop for want of it. But the fact remains, that 

 one can only be free to investigate in all departments 

 of chemistry and physics, when he not only has a 

 complete laboratory at his command, but a friend to 

 draw on for the expenses of each experiment. That 

 simplest of the departments of physics, namely, 

 astronomy, has now reached such perfection that no- 

 body can expect to do much more in it without a 

 perfectly equipped ob-^ervatory; and even this would 

 be useless without an income suflicient to employ a 

 corps of assistants to make the observations and com- 

 putations. But even in this simplest of physical 

 subjects, there is great misunderstanding. Our coun- 

 try has very many excellent obs>ervatories: and yet 

 little work is done in comparison, because no provis- 

 ion has been made for maintaining the work of the 

 observatory; and the wealth which, if concentrated, 

 might have made one effective observatory which 

 would prove a benefit to astronomical science, when 

 scattered among a half-dozen, merely fuinishes tele- 

 scopes for the people in the surrounding regir>n to 

 view the moon with. And here I strike the keynote 

 of at least one need of our country, if she would 

 stand well in science; and the following item which 

 I clip from a newspaper will illustrate the matter: — 



" The eccentric old Canadian, Arunah Huntington, 

 who left $200,000 to be divided among the public 

 schools of Vermont, has done something which will 

 be of little practical value to the schools. Each dis- 

 trict will be entitled to the insignificant sum of $10, 

 which will not advance much the cause of educa- 

 tion." 



Nobody will dispute the folly of such a bequest, or 

 the folly of filling the country with telescopes to look 

 at the moon, and calling them observatories. How 

 much better to concentrate the wealth into a few 

 parcels, and make first-class observatories and insti- 

 tutions with it! 



Is it possible that any of our four hundred colleges 

 and universities have love enough of learning to 

 unite with each other and form larger institutions'? 

 Is it possible that any have such a love of truth that 

 they are willing to be called by their right name? 

 I fear not; for the spirit of expectation, which is 

 analogous to the spirit of gambling, is strong in the 

 American breast, and each institution which now, 

 except in name, slumbers in obscurity, expects in 



