580 MODERN METHODS OF SCIENCE. 
vast amount of scientific labor has been accomplished in this 
country from the time of Franklin to the present day ; and in the 
application of science to the arts we are not far behind the most 
advanced nation of our own time. 
I know that American scientists are looked upon by their Eu- 
ropean colleagues as in some sense piratical in their nature, sim- 
ply capturing the hard-earned labors of others, applying the great 
truths and discoveries in science others have brought to light, and 
not evolving them by hard and laborious study and experiment. 
This is to some extent true, for the labors required of our profes- 
sors, who have educated and trained minds, in the countless col- 
leges that dot the land, are so onerous that no time is given them 
for the exercise of original thought and investigation. 
What can a physicist, a chemist or naturalist, do who has three 
or four classes to teach, usually in the most elementary part of 
their studies? The very labor unfits him for that free exercise of 
the mind which leads to new ideas and discoveries. He becomes an 
educational drudge instead of an intellectual scientist ; and what- 
ever his intrinsic merits may be, he is in most cases sustained, 
pecuniarily, no better than those engaged in the commonest pur- 
suits of life, being at the same time restricted in intellectual re- 
sources — such as books, scientific transactions, apparatus, etc. 
I will, however, just here make one other plea for our men of 
science against any unjust comparison with those across the At- 
lantic. Itis this. Our country is a new one, of most peculiar and 
wonderful features of surface, of soil, and of climate, and of un- 
told and fabulous wealth within its bowels; it beckons every man 
to fortune; and with such ease are wealth and honors snatched 
from its overflowing lap that even men who love and honor 
science are drawn off their direct paths into by-ways and other 
pursuits, and too often leave behind them the scientific toga, which 
is never again assumed. In Europe it is otherwise; no tempta- 
tions of this kind beset the scientist, and he delves into scientific 
lore, acquiring great ideas and telling them to the world, exciting 
their wonder; and even then the honors they acquire only bin 
them faster to their closets, for they are not tempted as we are- 
In later years the liberality of wealthy patrons of learning and 
science has done much to advance pure science in this country by 
- enabling the young and enthusiastic pursuers after Nature’s secrets 
to give full scope to their tastes, and thus has opened to them new 
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