720 
every stone instinct with emotion and the 
dust alive with memories of the past, may 
he not be similarly impressed when he feels 
that he is looking around upon a seat of 
future empire, a region where generations 
yet unborn may take a leading part in 
moulding the history of the world? What 
may we not expect of that energy which in 
sixty years has transformed a straggling 
village into one of the world’s great centers 
of commerce? May it not exercise a power- 
ful influence on the destiny not only of the 
country, but of the world’? Ifso, shall the 
power thus to be exercised prove an agent 
of beneficence, diffusing light and life 
among nations, or shall it be the opposite ? 
The time must come ere long when wealth 
shall outgrow the field in which it can be 
profitably employed. In what direction 
shall its possessors then look? Shall they 
train a posterity which will so use its 
power as to make the world better that. it 
has lived in it? Will the future heir to . 
great wealth prefer the intellectual life to 
the life of pleasure ? 
We can have no more hopeful answer to 
these questions than the establishment of 
this great-university in the very focus of the 
commercial activity of the West. Its con- 
nection with the institution we have been 
dedicating suggests some thoughts on science 
as a factor in that scheme of education best 
adapted to make the power of a wealthy 
community a benefit to the race at large. 
When we see what a factor science has been 
in our present civilization, how it has trans- 
formed the world and increased the means 
of human enjoyment by enabling men to 
apply the powers of nature to their own 
uses, it is not wonderful that it should claim 
the place in education hitherto held by 
classical studies. In the contest which has 
thus arisen I take no part but that of a 
peacemaker, holding that it is as important 
to us to keep in touch with the traditions 
of our race and to cherish the thoughts 
SCIENCE. 
[N. S. Vox. VI. No. 150: 
which have come down to us through the- 
centuries as it is to enjoy and utilize what. 
the present has to offer us. Speaking from 
this point of view, I would point out the: 
error of making the utilitarian applications 
of knowledge the main object in its pursuit. 
It is a historie fact that abstract science,. 
science pursued without any utilitarian end, 
has been at the basis of our progress in the 
application of knowledge. If in the last 
century such men as Galvaniand Volta had’ 
been moved by any other motive than love: 
of penetrating the secrets of nature they 
would never have pursued the seemingly 
useless experiments they did, and the 
foundations of electrical science would not 
have been laid. Our present applications 
of electricity did not become possible until 
Ohm’s mathematical laws of the electric: 
current, which when first made known 
seemed little more than mathematical curi- 
osities, had become the common property 
of inventors. Professional pride on the part 
of our own Henry led him, after making” 
the discoveries which rendered the telegraph. 
possible, to go no further in their application, 
of his discoveries, and to live and die with- 
out receiving a dollar of the millions which. 
the country has won through his agency. 
In the spirit of scientific progress thus. 
shown we haye patriotism in its highest 
form—a sentiment which does not seek to- 
benefit the country at the expense of the 
world, but to benefit the world by means of 
one’s country. Science has its competition, 
as keen as that which is the life of com- 
merce. But its rivalries are over the ques- 
tion who shall contribute the most and the 
best to the sum-total of knowledge—who- 
shall give the most, not who shall take the 
most. Its animating spirit is love of truth. 
Its pride is to do the greatest good to the 
greatest number. It embraces not only the 
whole human race, but all nature in its. 
scope. The public spirit of which this city 
is the focus has made the desert blossom as- 
