IOWA ACADEMY OP SCIENCES. 
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are instantly at his summons everywhere to save him and his 
from suffering and disease. Nay, the very fact of the matter 
is that science made possible the continued existence of Mr. 
Tolstoi and his serfs, when a few years since but for science- 
invented steamships and telegraphs all the people of southern 
Russia would have perished by starvation together. Mr. 
Tolstoi probably appreciates this, but he fancies that the world 
suffers more from selfishness and tyranny than from ignorance 
of nature and her laws, which may be true; but the antidote 
for tyranny is intelligence, for selfishness wisdom, and in the 
winning of such virtues science is certainly a contributor not 
to be despised. The most democratic statesmen in Europe 
to-day are not the men of religion, the clericals, but the men of 
science. It is one function of this Academy, at least, to keep 
the people of Iowa from lapsing in their allegiance to what 
may well be called, as it seems to me, the noblest and most 
beneficent intellectual movement of modern times. 
It would seem gratuitous thus to enter upon a defense of 
science or the scientific methods; they really need no defense; 
but after all, it is well sometimes to declare the truth. In 
fact science., as such, has never been popular. As usual, 
results only are popular. The toilsome, laborious researches 
recounted in the tomes of all the academies of earth are not 
attractive, not popular. They mean long days and nights of 
weary labor. Faraday and the electricians before him dis- 
covered and knew nearly all that we know to-day concerning 
induction and alternating currents, but Faraday never heard 
through a telephone the voice of his friend, nor walked in the 
blaze of an electric light. That came later. It is easy for men 
to sit by an incandesceut lamp and write criticisms of the 
scientific method, but such men ought at least be honest 
enough to acknowledge their indebtedness, to own that it pays 
to have scientific work done, however unsatisfactory the 
method of the scientist may seem to them to be. How many 
men there are ready to ridicule meteorology, the latest effort 
in the field of scientific research, and yet every year, even with 
our present imperfect methods and knowledge, the saving to 
humanity by our weather service in property, health and even 
life itself is of moment incalculable. Besides, who shall doubt 
that the day is coming when the currents of the upper air may 
be mapped and known as exactly, perhaps, as those of the 
