May 17, 1873.] 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
905 
forces, which acted without reference to practical ends. 
This also, I think, merits a moment’s attention. You are 
delighted, and ■with good reason, with your electric tele¬ 
graphs, proud of your steam-engines and your factories, 
and charmed with the productions of photography. You 
see daily, with just elation, the creation of new forms of 
industry—-new powei's of adding to the wealth and com¬ 
fort of society. Industrial England is heaving with forces 
tending to this end, and the pulse of industry beats still 
stronger in the United States. And yet, when analysed, 
what are industrial America and industrial England ? If 
you can tolerate freedom of speech on my part, I will 
answer this question by an illustration. Strip a strong 
arm, and regard the knotted muscles when the hand is 
clenched and the arm bent. Is this exhibition of energy 
the work of the muscle alone ? By no means. The 
muscle is the channel of an influence, without which it 
would be as powerless as a lump of plastic dough. It is 
■the delicate unseen nerve that unlocks the power of the 
muscle. And without those filaments of genius which 
have been shot like nerves thi'ough the body of society by 
the original discoverer, industrial America and industrial 
England would, I fear, be very much in the condition of 
that plastic dough. At the present time there is a cry 
in England for technical education, and it is the expi*es- 
sion of a time national want: but there is no outcry for 
original investigation. Still without this, as surely as the 
stream dwindles when the spring dries, so surely will their 
technical education lose all force of growth, all power of 
reproduction. Our great investigators have given us suf¬ 
ficient work for a time ; but if their spirit die out, we 
shall find ourselves eventually in the condition of those 
Chinese mentioned by De Tocqueville, who, having for¬ 
gotten the scientific origin of what they did, were at 
length compelled to copy without variation the inventions 
of an ancestry who, wiser than themselves, had drawn 
their inspiration direct from Nature. 
To keep society as regards science in healthy play, 
three classes of workers are necessary: Firstly, the in¬ 
vestigator of natural truth, whose vocation it is to pursue 
that truth, and extend the field of discovery for the truth’s 
own sake, and without any reference to practical ends. 
Secondly, the teacher of natural truth, whose vocation it 
is to give public diffusion to the knowledge already won 
by the discoverer. Thirdly, the applier of natural truth, 
whose vocation it is to make scientific knowledge avail¬ 
able for the needs, comforts, and luxuries of life. These 
.three classes ought to coexist, and interact upon each 
other, Now, the popular notion of science, both in this 
country and in England, often relates, ixot to science 
•strictly so called, but to the applications of science. 
Take the electric telegraph as an example, which has 
been repeatedly forced upon my attention of late. I am 
not here to attenuate in the slightest degree the services 
of those who, in England and America, have given the 
telegraph a power so wonderfully fitted up for public use. 
Assuredly they earned a great reward, and assuredly they 
have received it. But I should be untrue to you and to 
myself if I failed to tell you that, however high in par¬ 
ticular respects their claims and quality may be, practical 
men did not discover the electric telegraph. The dis¬ 
covery of the electric telegraph implies the discovery of 
electricity itself, and the development of its laws and 
phenomena. Such discoveries are not made by practical 
men, and they never will be made by them, because their 
minds are beset by ideas which, though of the highest 
value from one point of view, are not those which stimu¬ 
late the original discoverer. The ancients discovered the 
electricity of amber, and Gilbert, in the year 160Q, ex¬ 
tended the foi’ce to other bodies. Then followed other 
inquirers, your own Franklin among the number. But 
this form of electricity, though tried, did not come into 
use for telegraphic purposes. There appeared the great 
Italian, Volta, who discovered the source of electricity 
which bears lxis name, and applied the most profound 
insight and the most delicate experimental skill to its de¬ 
velopment. Then arose the man who added to the powers 
of his intellect all the graces of the human heart, Michael 
Faraday, the discoverer of the great domain of magnets, 
electi’icity. Oersted discovered the deflection of the mag¬ 
netic needle, and Arago and Sturgeon the magnetization 
of iron by the electric current. The voltaic circuit finally 
found its theoretic Newton in Ohm, v/hile at Princeton, 
Henry pushed forward the course of experimental inquiry. 
Here you have all the materials employed at this hour 
in all the forms of the electric telegraph. Nay, more ; 
Gruss, the celebrated astronomer, and Weber, the cele¬ 
brated natural philosopher, both professors in the Uni¬ 
versity of Gottingen, wishing to establish a rapid mode of 
communication between the observatory and the physical 
cabinet of the university, did this by means of an electric 
telegraph. The force, in shoi't, had been discovered, its 
laws investigated and made sure, the most complete 
mastery of its phenomena had been attained, nay, its 
applicability to telegraphic purposes demonstrated by 
men whose sole reward for their labours was the noble 
joy of discovery, and before your practical men appeared 
at all upon the scene. 
Are we to ignore all this ? We do so at our peril. For 
I say again, that, behind all your practical applications, 
there is a region of intellectual action to which practical 
men have rarely contributed, but from which they draw 
all their supplies. Cut them off from this region, and 
they become eventually helpless. In no case is the 
adage truer, “Other men laboured, but ye are entered 
into their labours,” than in the case of the discoverer and 
the applier of natural truth. But now a word on the 
other side. While I say that practical men are not the 
men to make the necessary antecedent discoveries, the 
cases are rare in which the discoverer knows how to 
turn his labours to practical account. Different 
qualities of miixd and different habits of thought 
are needed in the two cases ; and, while I wish to give 
emphatic utterance to the claims of those whose claims, 
owing to the single fact of their intellectual elevation, 
are often misunderstood, I am not here to exalt one 
class of workers at the expense of the other. They 
are the necessary complements of each other ; but re¬ 
member that one class is sure to be taken care of. . All 
the material rewards of society are already within 
their reach ; but it is at our peril that we neglect .to 
provide opportunity for those studies and pursuits which 
have no such rewai'ds, and from which, therefore, the 
rising genius of the country is incessantly tempted away. 
When the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth Rock, 
and when Penn made his treaty with the Indians, the 
newcomers had to build their houses, to chasten the 
earth into cultivation, and to take care of their souls. In 
such a community science, in its more abstract forms, 
was not to be thought of. At the present hour, when 
your hardy Western pioneers stand face to face with stub¬ 
born Nature, the pursuit of science for its own sake, is not 
to be expected. The first need of man is food and shelter j 
but a vast portion of this continent is already x'aised fai 
beyond this need. The gentlemen of New York, Boston, 
Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, have already 
reached that precise condition of well-being and independ¬ 
ence when a culture as high as humanity has yet reached 
may be justly demanded at their hands. They have reached 
that maturity, as possessors of wealth and leisure, vhen 
the investigator of natural truth, for the truth s own sake, 
ought to find among them promoters and protectors. 
Among the many grave problems before them they hav e 
this to solve, whether a republic is able to foster the 
highest forms of genius. 
You are familiar with the writings of De Tocqueville, 
and must be aware of the intense sympathy which he felt 
for your institutions; and this sympathy is all the more 
valuable from the philosophic candour with which he 
points out, not only your merits,.but your danger. If 
in no unfriendly spirit—in a spirit, indeed, the reverse o 
unfriendly—venture to repeat before you what this great 
