TEMPERATURE AND STRUCTURE OF THE SUN. 77 
important, large, well-equipped laboratories for research 
work. And, furthermore, the position of a professor in a 
German university is so highly regarded in my country, is 
so independent of presidents and governments, that I should 
stand in awe of them, almost as of divinity, did 1 not my- 
self belong to the same class. In my country, since the time 
of Luther, all the original thinkers have been university pro- 
fessors, who, in addition to their duties, have done research 
work without asking or receiving payment for such work. 
Let me tell you a little incident about Helmholtz's reply 
when he was feted by the scientific representatives of all 
nations upon his seventieth anniversary. When Helmholtz 
was praised as a benefactor of mankind, he answered in his 
characteristically modest manner, “Well, let me tell you, I 
did not start out to make the world happy; what I did was 
only to solve the questions which arose in my own mind.” 
He wondered at the glare of the cat’s eyes in the darkness 
and studied this curious phenomenon until he learned how 
the light enters the eyes and is returned from the retina in 
such a way that it may be observed. Thus he became the 
inventor of the famous opthalmoscope, which in the hands of 
clever physiologists and physicists became the instrument 
with which to examine our eyes and to protect them from 
many serious ailments. 
Thus all our technical industries profit by the original re- 
search of investigators who are not inspired by dreams of 
wealth, but who must think and work in order to satisfy their 
own inquiring natures. These men cannot be bought; they 
must be born ; and you will pardon me when I say that many 
such men are born in Germany, where idealism has been in- 
herited for several centuries. 
I need not tell you that all our electrical progress and in- 
dustries follow from the observation of the quivering of a 
frog’s leg, which Galvani or, as it is said, Lady Galvani 
made when turning the electric machine, which at that time 
was quite a new discovery. 
Let me give you another and more modern example of 
the technical or practical results which follow from pure 
