Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/183

Rh seeing our artists reduced to hirelings, and imploring Congress to protect them against foreign competition. We are tired of seeing our countrymen take their science from abroad, and boast that they here convert it into wealth. We are tired of seeing our professors degrading their chairs by the pursuit of applied science instead of pure science; or sitting inactive while the whole world is open to investigation; lingering by the wayside while the problem of the universe remains unsolved. We wish for something higher and nobler in this country of mediocrity, for a mountain to relieve the landscape of its monotony. We are surrounded with mysteries, and have been created with minds to enjoy and reason to aid in the unfolding of such mysteries. Nature calls to us to study her, and our better feelings urge us in the same direction.

For generations there have been some few students of science who have esteemed the study of nature the most noble of pursuits. Some have been wealthy, and some poor; but they have all had one thing in common—the love of nature and its laws. To these few men the world owes all the progress due to applied science, and yet very few ever received any payment in this world for their labors.

Faraday, the great discoverer of the principle on which all machines for electric lighting, electric railways and the transmission of power must rest, died a poor man, although others and the whole world have been enriched by his discoveries. And such must be the fate of the followers in his footsteps for some time to come.

But there will be those in the future who will study nature from pure love, and for them higher prizes than any yet obtained are waiting. We have but yet commenced our pursuit of science, and stand upon the threshold wondering what there is within. We explain the motion of the planets by the law of gravitation; but who will explain how two bodies, millions of miles apart, tend to go toward each other with a certain force?

We now weigh and measure electricity and electric currents with as much ease as ordinary matter, yet have we made any approach to an explanation of the phenomenon of electricity? Light is an undulatory motion, and yet do we know what it is that undulates? Heat is motion, yet do we know what it is that moves? Ordinary matter is a common substance, and yet who shall fathom the mystery of its internal constitution?

There is room for all in the work, and the race has but commenced. The problems are not to be solved in a moment, but need the best work of the best minds, for an indefinite time.

Shall our country be contented to stand by, while other countries lead in the race? Shall we always grovel in the dust, and pick up the crumbs which fall from the rich man's table, considering ourselves richer than he because we have more crumbs, while we forget that he