November 23, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



645 



can never give them that which comes only 

 with the experience this splendid man has 

 passed through, but you can and do train 

 them so as to eliminate the empiricism that 

 handicaps the man who does not possess 

 what you give to your graduates. 



I know I can say without fear of contra- 

 diction that no man knows better the value 

 of the higher education than just the kind 

 of man I have spoken of ; I need not dilate 

 upon this subject, the witnesses are all with 

 me. Let it be said to the honor of these 

 self-made men, these men who have made 

 a commercial success in their business 

 career, that you will find their names on 

 record as the very best friends of educa- 

 tion; they are the men who have given 

 millions to build up and foster the univer- 

 sities and technical schools of this good 

 land of ours. Not only has your patron, 

 Mr. Carnegie, contributed many millions to 

 higher education, but he has gone farther 

 by endowing original research and also pro- 

 viding a fund to care for the men who have 

 borne the heat and burden of the day as 

 teachers in our educational institutions. 

 What a splendid work for one self-made, 

 self-educated man to do. Other names I 

 could mention who have done nobly for the 

 cause of education, and when the book of 

 God is written Ben Adhem's name will not 

 be the only one recorded of those who loved 

 his fellow men. 



It is a great pleasure to me to be hon- 

 ored to-day with the presence of my long- 

 time friend, Mr. Charles M. Schwab, who 

 has done so splendidly for technical educa- 

 tion in our great manufacturing town of 

 Homestead ; nor did his interest cease with 

 this good work, for I know what he has 

 done for State College, for the Western 

 University of Pennsylvania in Pittsburg 

 and kindred ihstitutions. He knows and 

 appreciates what there is in the hearts of 

 his workmen and how they love to learn of 



the good and beautiful things in this life 

 that they can and should have a share in 

 enjoying. All honor to such men. 



Every industry, every scientific pursuit, 

 every calling of to-day demands the best 

 education that can be given by the best men 

 in the best schools, and the magnificent 

 results that have crowded in upon us in the 

 last half century are largely due to the 

 masterly work done in our institutions of 

 higher learning. 



Let us examine for a little while some of 

 the results coming to us from university 

 men. In the great field of astronomy and 

 astronomical physics we have been brought 

 almost to the borderland of the infinite. 

 In the last quarter of a century, discovery 

 after discovery has been made and so many 

 new facts brought to light that no one mind 

 is capable of comprehending them all. 



In the domain of solar physics we have 

 thrust our spectrobolometers into the very 

 depths of the sun's photosphere. With 

 our spectrographs we have taken hourly 

 records of the terrific storms that rage upon 

 our great luminary. That record can be 

 made to tell us the very elements that go 

 to make up the solar disturbance. The 

 sun's, energy has been measured and its 

 source discovered— not in the old-time 

 meteoric theory of accretion, but we now 

 know that the shrinkage of the solar en- 

 velope is all sufficient to keep up its tem- 

 perature for at least ten millions of years 

 to come, should no new source of its energy 

 be discovered. 



The university man has also shown us 

 that in all probability our sun is a variable 

 star, with a variation of perhaps ten per 

 cent, in its radiant energy. Some day he 

 will tell us its period of variability as we 

 now know with absolute certainty the 

 period of many variable stars in the 

 heavens. The university man has also 

 measured the radiant energy coming to us 



