August 12, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



203 



and especially the university-trained man, 

 iSj directly or indirectly, to control the 

 destinies of the nation. 



Bnt while the professor performs im- 

 portant service outside the university, his 

 greatest service is his own creative work 

 and the production of new scholars in the 

 laboratory and seminary. I unhesitatingly 

 assert that there is no investigation of mat- 

 ter or force or mind to-day in progress, 

 but to-morrow may become of inestimable 

 practical value. This could be illustrated 

 by various investigations which have been 

 made here. It is easy to show that the 

 discoveries at the University of Wisconsin 

 bring vastly more wealth to the state each 

 year than the entire expenditure of the in- 

 stitution, but to tell of them might seem 

 like placing too great emphasis upon our 

 own achievements, and I, therefore, turn 

 elsewhere for illustrations. 



Scarcely more than a century since, 

 Franklin began studies upon the nature of 

 lightning. Later the character of electrical 

 force was during many years investigated 

 with remarkable power by Faraday. If, 

 during these studies, some one had said: 

 'Of what practical value can be the dis- 

 coveries of Franklin and Faraday?' no 

 one could have given the answer. Had this 

 work been paid for by the state it would 

 have been easy to show to the legislatiire 

 that such a foolish waste of money was, 

 wholly unwarranted. But out of the dis- 

 coveries of Franklin and Faraday, and 

 those M'ho followed them, has come one of 

 the greatest material advances that the 

 world has known. Electricity has become 

 the most docile of the forms of energy. It 

 serves to carry to distant points the power 

 of Niagara. It is the nerves which make 

 all the world one body, which bring to us 

 instantaneously all the happenings in every 

 quarter of the globe, which puts in our ear 

 the vibrations of the voice of our friend a 

 thousand miles awa}\ Through increased 



knowledge of nature the peoples of aU 

 nations are being made slowly, haltingly, 

 with occasional disastrous wars, into one 

 family. And this is largely the result of 

 recondite studies upon subtle forces, which, 

 even now, we can not define, bi;t which we 

 can utilize. 



A striking case of the profound sex'vice of 

 the investigator is furnished by the studies 

 of Pasteur and Koch. If, a half century 

 since, a legislator in France had wished to 

 be humorous at the expense of the scientist, 

 what better object of derision could he 

 have found than his countryman, Pasteur, 

 who was looking through a microscope at 

 the minute forms of life, studying the 

 nature and transformations of yeast and 

 microbes 1 And yet, from the studies of 

 Pasteur and Koeh, and their successors, 

 have sprung the most beneficent discoveries 

 which it has been the lot of man to bestow 

 upon his fellow men. The plag-ue and 

 cholera and yellow fever are controlled; 

 the word diphtheria no longer whitens the 

 cheek of the parent; even tuberculosis is 

 less dreaded and may soon be conquered; 

 aseptic surgery performs marvelous opera- 

 tions which, a few years ago, would have 

 ■ been pronounced impossible. The human 

 suffering thus alleviated is immeasurable. 

 These illustrations are sufficient to show 

 that no knowledge of substance or force or 

 life is so remote or minute, although ap- 

 parently indefinitely distant from present 

 practise, but that to-morrow it may become 

 an indispensable need. The practical man 

 of aU practical men is he who, with his 

 face toward truth, follows wherever it 

 may lead, with no thought but to get a 

 deeper insight into the order of the uni- 

 verse in which he lives. It can not be pre- 

 dicted at what distant nook of knowledge, 

 apparently remote from any practical serv- 

 ice, a brilliantly useful stream may spring. 

 It is certain that every fundamental dis- 

 covery yet made by the delving stiident has 



