SCIENCE IN THE UNITED STATES. 101 
It would seem also that in this young nation (excepting New 
England) the people are of a very speculative turn of mind. 
- Poets of both sexes are numerous. Religious sects sometimes 
give evidence of a great power of imagination. The most eccen- 
tric, that of the Mormons, strove to reéstablish a well known in- 
stitution, polygamy, but it has also invented the theory of spirit- 
ual wives, which, by its purity, its grace and its novelty, really 
deserves a prize of poesy. Spiritualism has found more favor in 
the United States than in Europe. Now to reach a brilliant scien- 
tific epoch, we must have a public eager for abstract truth, for 
things which may be demonstrated by perfectly sure processes, 
and, I should add, things of little or no practical use. 
Precedents, traditions, so advantageous to free scientific labor, 
are wholly wanting among most of those who emigrate to the 
United States. The selection of this population is brought about 
by a desire for lucrative employment, and the result is in perfect 
accordance with the theory. It would be quite different, if, for ex- 
ample, wars and revolutions were gradually undermining civiliza- 
tion in Europe, and if thousands of families who had followed 
liberal professions for one or two centuries, hoped to find more se- 
curity in America. We should then see, on a large scale, what 
took place for the benefit of New England, of Switzerland, of 
Holland and of Prussia, at the time of the old persecutions of 
French and Belgian protestants. America would have inherited 
the secular culture of sciences in Europe. In the absence of sim- 
ilar circumstances, the extension of inherited fortunes, of instruc- 
tion, and of the isolation, already apparent, of many enlightened 
men in the midst of democratic tumult, must gradually develop, 
among a certain class of the American people, a taste for disin- 
terested and purely scientific research. 
Distance from the old civilized countries has long been injuri- 
ous to the labors and the reputation of American savants. In 
proof of this, we may notice that the only citizens of the United 
States called to the high distinction of the title of Associate of 
the French Academy of Science, Franklin and Thompson, Count 
Rumford, had resided in Europe, the first in a conspicuous posi- 
tion, the other for a long period of years.* Otherwise, it is very 
gi * DeCandolle’s tables end with 1870. Since then the late Professor nent was 
r 
e a Ay ted i America 
ay `> Pi . 4 = 
