My desire in these lectures has been
to show you, with as little breach of continuity as
possible, something of the past growth and present
aspect of a department of science, in which have laboured
some of the greatest intellects the world has ever
seen. I have sought to confer upon each experiment
a distinct intellectual value, for experiments ought
to be the representatives and expositors of thought-a
language addressed to the eye as spoken words are to
the ear. In association with its context, nothing
is more impressive or instructive than a fit experiment;
but, apart from its context, it rather suits the conjurer’s
purpose of surprise, than the purpose of education
which ought to be the ruling motive of the scientific
man.
And now a brief summary of our work
will not be out of place. Our present mastery
over the laws and phenomena of light has its origin
in the desire of man to know. We have
seen the ancients busy with this problem, but, like
a child who uses his arms aimlessly, for want of the
necessary muscular training, so these early men speculated
vaguely and confusedly regarding natural phenomena,
not having had the discipline needed to give clearness
to their insight, and firmness to their grasp of principles.
They assured themselves of the rectilineal propagation
of light, and that the angle of incidence was equal
to the angle of reflection. For more than a thousand
years-I might say, indeed, for more than
fifteen hundred years-the scientific intellect
appears as if smitten with paralysis, the fact being
that, during this time, the mental force, which might
have run in the direction of science, was diverted
into other directions.
The course of investigation, as regards
light, was resumed in 1100 by an Arabian philosopher
named Alhazen. Then it was taken up in succession
by Roger Bacon, Vitellio, and Kepler. These men,
though failing to detect the principles which ruled
the facts, kept the fire of investigation constantly
burning. Then came the fundamental discovery
of Snell, that cornerstone of optics, as I have already
called it, and immediately afterwards we have the application,
by Descartes, of Snell’s discovery to the explanation
of the rainbow. Following this we have the overthrow,
by Roemer, of the notion of Descartes, that light
was transmitted instantaneously through space.
Then came Newton’s crowning experiments on the
analysis and synthesis of white light, by which it
was proved to be compounded of various kinds of light
of different degrees of refrangibility.
Up to his demonstration of the composition
of white light, Newton had been everywhere triumphant-triumphant
in the heavens, triumphant on the earth, and his subsequent
experimental work is, for the most part, of immortal
value. But infallibility is not an attribute of
man, and, soon after his discovery of the nature of
white light, Newton proved himself human. He
supposed that refraction and chromatic dispersion
went hand in hand, and that you could not abolish the
one without at the same time abolishing the other.
Here Dollond corrected him.
But Newton committed a graver error
than this. Science, as I sought to make clear
to you in our second lecture, is only in part a thing
of the senses. The roots of phenomena are embedded
in a region beyond the reach of the senses, and less
than the root of the matter will never satisfy the
scientific mind. We find, accordingly, in this
career of optics the greatest minds constantly yearning
to break the bounds of the senses, and to trace phenomena
to their subsensible foundation. Thus impelled,
they entered the region of theory, and here Newton,
though drawn from time to time towards truth, was drawn
still more strongly towards error; and he made error
his substantial choice. His experiments are imperishable,
but his theory has passed away. For a century
it stood like a dam across the course of discovery;
but, as with all barriers that rest upon authority,
and not upon truth, the pressure from behind increased,
and eventually swept the barrier away.
In 1808 Malus, looking through
Iceland spar at the sun, reflected from the window
of the Luxembourg Palace in Paris, discovered the
polarization of light by reflection. As stated
at the time, this discovery ushered in the darkest
hour in the fortunes of the wave theory. But
the darkness did not continue. In 1811 Arago discovered
the splendid chromatic phenomena which we have had
illustrated by the deportment of plates of gypsum
in polarized light; he also discovered the rotation
of the plane of polarization by quartz-crystals.
In 1813 Seebeck discovered the polarization of light
by tourmaline. That same year Brewster discovered
those magnificent bands of colour that surround the
axes of biaxal crystals. In 1814 Wollaston discovered
the rings of Iceland spar. All these effects,
which, without a theoretic clue, would leave the human
mind in a jungle of phenomena without harmony or relation,
were organically connected by the theory of undulation.
The wave theory was applied and verified
in all directions, Airy being especially conspicuous
for the severity and conclusiveness of his proofs.
A most remarkable verification fell to the lot of the
late Sir William Hamilton, of Dublin, who, taking
up the theory where Fresnel had left it, arrived at
the conclusion that at four special points of the
‘wave-surface’ in double-refracting crystals,
the ray was divided, not into two parts but into an
infinite number of parts; forming at these points
a continuous conical envelope instead of two images.
No human eye had ever seen this envelope when Sir
William Hamilton inferred its existence. He asked
Dr. Lloyd to test experimentally the truth of his
theoretic conclusion. Lloyd, taking a crystal
of arragonite, and following with the most scrupulous
exactness the indications of theory, cutting the crystal
where theory said it ought to be cut, observing it
where theory said it ought to be observed, discovered
the luminous envelope which had previously been a mere
idea in the mind of the mathematician.
Nevertheless this great theory of
undulation, like many another truth, which in the
long run has proved a blessing to humanity, had to
establish, by hot conflict, its right to existence.
Illustrious names were arrayed against it. It
had been enunciated by Hooke, it had been expounded
and applied by Huyghens, it had been defended by Euler.
But they made no impression. And, indeed, the
theory in their hands lacked the strength of a demonstration.
It first took the form of a demonstrated verity in
the hands of Thomas Young. He brought the waves
of light to bear upon each other, causing them to support
each other, and to extinguish each other at will.
From their mutual actions he determined their lengths,
and applied his knowledge in all directions.
He finally showed that the difficulty of polarization
yielded to the grasp of theory.
After him came Fresnel, whose transcendent
mathematical abilities enabled him to give the theory
a generality unattained by Young. He seized it
in its entirety; followed the ether into the hearts
of crystals of the most complicated structure, and
into bodies subjected to strain and pressure.
He showed that the facts discovered by Malus,
Arago, Brewster, and Biot were so many ganglia, so
to speak, of his theoretic organism, deriving from
it sustenance and explanation. With a mind too
strong for the body with which it was associated, that
body became a wreck long before it had become old,
and Fresnel died, leaving, however, behind him a name
immortal in the annals of science.
One word more I should like to say
regarding Fresnel. There are things better even
than science. Character is higher than Intellect,
but it is especially pleasant to those who wish to
think well of human nature when high intellect and
upright character are found combined. They were
combined in this young Frenchman. In those hot
conflicts of the undulatory theory, he stood forth
as a man of integrity, claiming no more than his right,
and ready to concede their rights to others. He
at once recognized and acknowledged the merits of Thomas
Young. Indeed, it was he, and his fellow-countryman
Arago, who first startled England into the consciousness
of the injustice done to Young in the ‘Edinburgh
Review.’
I should like to read to you a brief
extract from a letter written by Fresnel to Young
in 1824, as it throws a pleasant light upon the character
of the French philosopher. ‘For a long time,’
says Fresnel, ’that sensibility, or that vanity,
which people call love of glory has been much blunted
in me. I labour much less to catch the suffrages
of the public, than to obtain that inward approval
which has always been the sweetest reward of my efforts.
Without doubt, in moments of disgust and discouragement,
I have often needed the spur of vanity to excite me
to pursue my researches. But all the compliments
I have received from Arago, De la Place, and Biot
never gave me so much pleasure as the discovery of
a theoretic truth or the confirmation of a calculation
by experiment.’
This, then, is the core of the whole
matter as regards science. It must be cultivated
for its own sake, for the pure love of truth, rather
than for the applause or profit that it brings.
And now my occupation in America is well-nigh gone.
Still I will bespeak your tolerance for a few concluding
remarks, in reference to the men who have bequeathed
to us the vast body of knowledge of which I have sought
to give you some faint idea in these lectures.
What was the motive that spurred them on? What
urged them to those battles and those victories over
reticent Nature, which have become the heritage of
the human race? It is never to be forgotten that
not one of those great investigators, from Aristotle
down to Stokes and Kirchhoff, had any practical end
in view, according to the ordinary definition of the
word ‘practical.’ They did not propose
to themselves money as an end, and knowledge as a
means of obtaining it. For the most part, they
nobly reversed this process, made knowledge their end,
and such money as they possessed the means of obtaining
it.
We see to-day the issues of their
work in a thousand practical forms, and this may be
thought sufficient to justify, if not ennoble, their
efforts. But they did not work for such issues;
their reward was of a totally different kind.
In what way different? We love clothes, we love
luxuries, we love fine équipages, we
love money, and any man who can point to these as
the result of his efforts in life, justifies these
results before all the world. In America and England,
more especially, he is a ‘practical’ man.
But I would appeal confidently to this assembly whether
such things exhaust the demands of human nature?
The very presence here for six inclement nights of
this great audience, embodying so much of the mental
force and refinement of this vast city, is an
answer to my question. I need not tell such an
assembly that there are joys of the intellect as well
as joys of the body, or that these pleasures of the
spirit constituted the reward of our great investigators.
Led on by the whisperings of natural truth, through
pain and self-denial, they often pursued their work.
With the ruling passion strong in death, some of them,
when no longer able to hold a pen, dictated to their
friends the last results of their labours, and then
rested from them for ever.
Could we have seen these men at work,
without any knowledge of the consequences of their
work, what should we have thought of them? To
the uninitiated, in their day, they might often appear
as big children playing with soap-bubbles and other
trifles. It is so to this hour. Could you
watch the true investigator-your Henry or
your Draper, for example-in his laboratory,
unless animated by his spirit, you could hardly understand
what keeps him there. Many of the objects which
rivet his attention might appear to you utterly trivial;
and if you were to ask him what is the use
of his work, the chances are that you would confound
him. He might not be able to express the use of
it in intelligible terms. He might not be able
to assure you that it will put a dollar into the pocket
of any human being present or to come. That scientific
discovery may put not only dollars into the
pockets of individuals, but millions into the exchequers
of nations, the history of science amply proves; but
the hope of its doing so never was, and it never can
be, the motive power of the investigator.
I know that some risk is run in speaking
thus before practical men. I know what De Tocqueville
says of you. ‘The man of the North,’
he says, ’has not only experience, but knowledge.
He, however, does not care for science as a pleasure,
and only embraces it with avidity when it leads to
useful applications.’ But what, I would
ask, are the hopes of useful applications which have
caused you so many times to fill this place, in spite
of snow-drifts and biting cold? What, I may ask,
is the origin of that kindness which drew me from
my work in London to address you here, and which,
if I permitted it, would send me home a millionaire?
Not because I had taught you to make a single cent
by science am I here to-night, but because I tried
to the best of my ability to present science to the
world as an intellectual good. Surely no two
terms were ever so distorted and misapplied with reference
to man, in his higher relations, as these terms useful
and practical. Let us expand our definitions
until they embrace all the needs of man, his highest
intellectual needs inclusive. It is specially
on this ground of its administering to the higher needs
of the intellect; it is mainly because I believe it
to be wholesome, not only as a source of knowledge
but as a means of discipline, that I urge the claims
of science upon your attention.
But with reference to material needs
and joys, surely pure science has also a word to say.
People sometimes speak as if steam had not been studied
before James Watt, or electricity before Wheatstone
and Morse; whereas, in point of fact, Watt and Wheatstone
and Morse, with all their practicality, were the mere
outcome of antecedent 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 telegraphs,
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 powers of adding
to the wealth and comfort 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 analyzed, 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 through the body of society
by the original discoverer, industrial America, and
industrial England, would 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 a cry
in which the most commonplace intellect can join, its
necessity is so obvious. But there is no such
cry for original investigation. Still, without
this, as surely as the stream dwindles when the spring
dies, so surely will ‘technical education’
lose all force of growth, all power of reproduction.
Our great investigators have given us sufficient 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 forgotten
the scientific origin of what they did, were at length
compelled to copy without variation the inventions
of an ancestry wiser than themselves, who had drawn
their inspiration direct from Nature.
Both England and America have reason
to bear those things in mind, for the largeness and
nearness of material results are only too likely to
cause both countries to forget the small spiritual
beginnings of such results, in the mind of the scientific
discoverer. You multiply, but he creates.
And if you starve him, or otherwise kill him-nay,
if you fail to secure for him free scope and encouragement-you
not only lose the motive power of intellectual progress,
but infallibly sever yourselves from the springs of
industrial life.
What has been said of technical operations
holds equally good for education, for here also the
original investigator constitutes the fountain-head
of knowledge. It belongs to the teacher to give
this knowledge the requisite form; an honourable and
often a difficult task. But it is a task which
receives its final sanctification, when the teacher
himself honestly tries to add a rill to the great stream
of scientific discovery. Indeed, it may be doubted
whether the real life of science can be fully felt
and communicated by the man who has not himself been
taught by direct communion with Nature. We may,
it is true, have good and instructive lectures from
men of ability, the whole of whose knowledge is second-hand,
just as we may have good and instructive sermons from
intellectually able and unregenerate men. But
for that power of science, which corresponds to what
the Puritan fathers would call experimental religion
in the heart, you must ascend to the original investigator.
To keep society as regards science
in healthy play, three classes of workers are necessary:
Firstly, the investigator 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 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 available for the needs, comforts, and luxuries
of civilized life. These three classes ought to
co-exist and interact. Now, the popular notion
of science, both in this country and in England, often
relates not to science strictly so called, but to the
applications of science. Such applications, especially
on this continent, are so astounding-they
spread themselves so largely and umbrageously before
the public eye-that they often shut out
from view those workers who are engaged in the quieter
and profounder business of original investigation.
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
form so wonderfully fitted for public use. They
earned a great reward, and they have received it.
But I should be untrue to you and to myself if I failed
to tell you that, however high in particular respects
their claims and qualities may be, your practical
men did not discover the electric telegraph. The
discovery 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 stimulate the original discoverer.
The ancients discovered the electricity
of amber; and Gilbert, in the year 1600, extended
the discovery to other bodies. Then followed
Boyle, Von Guericke, Gray, Canton, Du Fay, Kleist,
Cunaeus, and your own Franklin. But their form
of electricity, though tried, did not come into use
for telegraphic purposes. Then appeared the great
Italian Volta, who discovered the source of electricity
which bears his name, and applied the most profound
insight, and the most delicate experimental skill
to its development. 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 magneto-electricity. OErsted
discovered the deflection of the magnetic needle, and
Arago and Sturgeon the magnetization of iron by the
electric current. The voltaic circuit finally
found its theoretic Newton in Ohm; while Henry, of
Princeton, who had the sagacity to recognize the merits
of Ohm while they were still decried in his own country,
was at this time in the van of experimental inquiry.
In the works of these men you have
all the materials employed at this hour, in all the
forms of the electric telegraph. Nay, more; Gauss,
the illustrious astronomer, and Weber, the illustrious
natural philosopher, both professors in the University
of Goettingen, 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. Thus, before your practical
men appeared upon the scene, the force 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
excitement of research, and the joy attendant on the
discovery of natural truth.
Are we to ignore all this? We
do so at our peril. For I say again that, behind
all our 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 applier of natural
truth. But now a word on the other side.
While practical men are not the men to make the necessary
antecedent discoveries, the cases are rare, though,
in our day, not absent, in which the discoverer knows
how to turn his labours to practical account.
Different qualities of mind and habits of thought
are usually needed in the two cases; and while I wish
to give emphatic utterance to the claims of those
whose position, owing to the simple fact of their
intellectual elevation, is often misunderstood, I
am not here to exalt the one class of workers at the
expense of the other. They are the necessary complements
of each other. But remember that one class is
sure to be taken care of. All the material rewards
of society are already within their reach, while that
same society habitually ascribes to them intellectual
achievements which were never theirs. This cannot
but act to the detriment of those studies out of which,
not only our knowledge of nature, but our present
industrial arts themselves, have sprung, and from
which the rising genius of the country is incessantly
tempted away.
Pasteur, one of the most illustrious
members of the Institute of France, in accounting
for the disastrous overthrow of his country, and the
predominance of Germany in the late war, expresses
himself thus: ’Few persons comprehend the
real origin of the marvels of industry and the wealth
of nations. I need no further proof of this than
the employment, more and more frequent, in official
language, and in writings of all sorts, of the erroneous
expression applied science. The abandonment
of scientific careers by men capable of pursuing them
with distinction, was recently deplored in the presence
of a minister of the greatest talent. The statesman
endeavoured to show that we ought not to be surprised
at this result, because in our day the reign of
theoretic science yielded place to that of applied
science. Nothing could be more erroneous than
this opinion, nothing, I venture to say, more dangerous,
even to practical life, than the consequences which
might flow from these words. They have rested
in my mind as a proof of the imperious necessity of
reform in our superior education. There exists
no category of the sciences, to which the name of
applied science could be rightly given. We have
science, and the applications of science, which
are united together as the tree and its fruit.’
And Cuvier, the great comparative
anatomist, writes thus upon the same theme: ’These
grand practical innovations are the mere applications
of truths of a higher order, not sought with a practical
intent, but pursued for their own sake, and solely
through an ardour for knowledge. Those who applied
them could not have discovered them; but those who
discovered them had no inclination to pursue them to
a practical end. Engaged in the high regions
whither their thoughts had carried them, they hardly
perceived these practical issues though born of their
own deeds. These rising workshops, these peopled
colonies, those ships which furrow the seas-this
abundance, this luxury, this tumult-all
this comes from discoveries in science, and it all
remains strange to the discoverers. At the point
where science merges into practice they abandon it;
it concerns them no more.’
When the Pilgrim Fathers landed at
Plymouth Rock, and when Penn made his treaty with
the Indians, the new-comers had to build their houses,
to cultivate the earth, and to take care of their souls.
In such a community science, in its more abstract
forms, was not to be thought of. And at the present
hour, when your hardy Western pioneers stand face
to face with stubborn Nature, piercing the mountains
and subduing the forest and the prairie, the pursuit
of science, for its own sake, is not to be expected.
The first need of man is food and shelter; but a vast
portion of this continent is already raised far beyond
this need. The gentlemen of New York, Brooklyn,
Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington have
already built their houses, and very beautiful they
are; they have also secured their dinners, to the
excellence of which I can also bear testimony.
They have, in fact, reached that precise condition
of well-being and independence 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, when the investigator
of natural truth, for the truth’s own sake,
ought to find among them promoters and protectors.
Among the many problems before them
they have 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 defects and
dangers. Now if I come here to speak of science
in America in a critical and captious spirit, an invisible
radiation from my words and manner will enable you
to find me out, and will guide your treatment of me
to-night. But if I in no unfriendly spirit-in
a spirit, indeed, the reverse of unfriendly-venture
to repeat before you what this great historian and
analyst of democratic institutions said of America,
I am persuaded that you will hear me out. He wrote
some three and twenty years ago, and, perhaps, would
not write the same to-day; but it will do nobody any
harm to have his words repeated, and, if necessary,
laid to heart.
In a work published in 1850, De Tocqueville
says: ’It must be confessed that, among
the civilized peoples of our age, there are few in
which the highest sciences have made so little progress
as in the United States.’ He declares his
conviction that, had you been alone in the universe,
you would soon have discovered that you cannot long
make progress in practical science without cultivating
theoretic science at the same time. But, according
to De Tocqueville, you are not thus alone. He
refuses to separate America from its ancestral home;
and it is there, he contends, that you collect the
treasures of the intellect, without taking the trouble
to create them.
De Tocqueville evidently doubts the
capacity of a democracy to foster genius as it was
fostered in the ancient aristocracies. ‘The
future,’ he says, ’will prove whether
the passion for profound knowledge, so rare and so
fruitful, can be born and developed as readily in
democratic societies as in aristocracies. For
my part,’ he continues, ‘I can hardly
believe it.’ He speaks of the unquiet feverishness
of democratic communities, not in times of great excitement,
for such times may give an extraordinary impetus to
ideas, but in times of peace. There is then,
he says, ’a small and uncomfortable agitation,
a sort of incessant attrition of man against man,
which troubles and distracts the mind without imparting
to it either loftiness or animation.’ It
rests with you to prove whether these things are necessarily
so-whether scientific genius cannot find,
in the midst of you, a tranquil home.
I should be loth to gainsay so keen
an observer and so profound a political writer, but,
since my arrival in this country, I have been unable
to see anything in the constitution of society, to
prevent a student, with the root of the matter in
him, from bestowing the most steadfast devotion on
pure science. If great scientific results are
not achieved in America, it is not to the small agitations
of society that I should be disposed to ascribe the
defect, but to the fact that the men among you who
possess the endowments necessary for profound scientific
inquiry, are laden with duties of administration, or
tuition, so heavy as to be utterly incompatible with
the continuous and tranquil meditation which original
investigation demands. It may well be asked whether
Henry would have been transformed into an administrator,
or whether Draper would have forsaken science to write
history, if the original investigator had been honoured
as he ought to be in this land. I hardly think
they would. Still I do not imagine this state
of things likely to last. In America there is
a willingness on the part of individuals to devote
their fortunes, in the matter of education, to the
service of the commonwealth, which is probably without
a parallel elsewhere; and this willingness requires
but wise direction to enable you effectually to wipe
away the reproach of De Tocqueville.
Your most difficult problem will be,
not to build institutions, but to discover men.
You may erect laboratories and endow them; you may
furnish them with all the appliances needed for inquiry;
in so doing you are but creating opportunity for the
exercise of powers which come from sources entirely
beyond your reach. You cannot create genius by
bidding for it. In biblical language, it is the
gift of God; and the most you could do, were your
wealth, and your willingness to apply it, a million-fold
what they are, would be to make sure that this glorious
plant shall have the freedom, light, and warmth necessary
for its development. We see from time to time
a noble tree dragged down by parasitic runners.
These the gardener can remove, though the vital force
of the tree itself may lie beyond him: and so,
in many a case you men of wealth can liberate genius
from the hampering toils which the struggle for existence
often casts around it.
Drawn by your kindness, I have come
here to give these lectures, and now that my visit
to America has become almost a thing of the past, I
look back upon it as a memory without a single stain.
No lecturer was ever rewarded as I have been.
From this vantage-ground, however, let me remind you
that the work of the lecturer is not the highest work;
that in science, the lecturer is usually the distributor
of intellectual wealth amassed by better men.
And though lecturing and teaching, in moderation,
will in general promote their moral health, it is
not solely or even chiefly, as lecturers, but as investigators,
that your highest men ought to be employed. You
have scientific genius amongst you-not
sown broadcast, believe me, it is sown thus nowhere-but
still scattered here and there. Take all unnecessary
impediments out of its way. Keep your sympathetic
eye upon the originator of knowledge. Give him
the freedom necessary for his researches, not overloading
him, either with the duties of tuition or of administration,
nor demanding from him so-called practical results-above
all things, avoiding that question which ignorance
so often addresses to genius: ‘What is
the use of your work?’ Let him make truth his
object, however unpractical for the time being it may
appear. If you cast your bread thus upon the waters,
be assured it will return to you, though it be after
many days.