FRANCIS AMASA WALKER. 643 



to be applied forthwith for the benefit of his own generation, and his 

 own country. There was no alteri seculo about him. He was not con- 

 tent to keep a mighty magnet in his museum, holding its weight till a 

 later generation should accidentally discover and make useful the 

 resources of its power. Still less could he tolerate for an instant that 

 arrogant and disdainful spirit with which some men who undertake, 

 with little title, to represent science in this country, sneer at any 

 attempt to make use of the forces she reveals to us for the service of 

 mankind. Someone said, the other day, that science was becoming a 

 hod carrier. I do not see why the term "hod carrier" should express 

 the relation rather than the term " benefactress." I do not see, either, 

 that there is anything degrading in the thought that the knowledge 

 of the learned man enables him to lift the burden beneath which 

 humanity is bowed and bent. I do not know that science is exempt 

 from the divine law, "He that is greatest among you, let him be the 

 servant of all." If the great forces of the universe perform all useful 

 of&ces for man, if the sunshine warm and light our dwellings, if gravi- 

 tation move the world and keep it true to its hour, nay, if it keep the 

 temple or cathedral in its place when the hod carrier has builded it, I 

 do not see why it should not lend its beneficent aid to him also. Our 

 illustrious philosopher advised his countryman to " hitch his wagon to 

 a star." The star will move no less serenely on its sublime pathway 

 when the wagon is hitched to it. I do not know that any archangel or 

 goddess, however resplendent the wings, has yet been constructed or 

 imagined without feet. I do not know that any archangel, however 

 glorious, has ever been created or imagined without sympathy with 

 suffering humanity. 



I think perhaps this exalted, let me rather say this divine, sympathy 

 for common humanity is the peculiar characteristic of the men who 

 have been devoted to scientific pursuit in this country. Each of the 

 great republics of the world has stood for a great ideal — the Greek for 

 beauty, the Eoman for law, the Hebrew for religious faith. So the 

 American stands, I will not say for utility, for that word has bad asso- 

 ciations, but rather for ennobling humanity and raising from the dust 

 its humblest and coarsest members. I will not undertake to dispute 

 whether this be of itself and alone the highest ideal to which states 

 have been consecrated. I certainly do not think, highly as I esteem 

 him, that Benjamin Franklin was the loftiest example either of phi- 

 losophy or statesmanship. But the realization of our ideal is the condi- 

 tion of all the others. There can be neither beauty, law, love, nor 

 spiritual life for a peojjle in abject poverty or condemned to struggle 

 for existence under a perpetual and unremitting drudgery. It is the 

 praise and the glory of the great leaders of American science — it is the 

 glory of Francis Walker — that the truths they have discovered and 

 the laws they have expounded have been the benignant harbingers of 

 light, knowledge, and happiness to the mass of mankind. A soul living 

 in abject poverty is but the soul of a brute, though in human form. 



