98 ASPECTS OF AMERICAN ASTRONOMY. 



emotion and the dust alive witli memories of the past, may he not be 

 similarly impressed when he feels that he is looking around upon a 

 seat of future emigre — a region where generations yet unborn may take 

 a leading part in molding 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 powerful influence on the destiny not only of the 

 country but of the world? If so, 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 commer- 

 cial activity of the West. Its connection 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 transformed 

 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 1 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 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 an historic fact that 

 abstract science — science i)ursued without any utilitarian end — has been 

 at the base of our progress in the utilization of knowledge. If in the 

 last century such men as Gal van i and 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 foundation of electrical science would not have been laid. Our 

 j)resent 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 curiosities, had become 

 the common i)roperty 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, and to live 

 and die witliout receiving a dollar of the millions which the country 

 has won through his agency. 



