Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/540

522 Cicero, Shakespeare, or Newton, because we live in a later period of the world's history; when, through science, the world has become richer in great ideas. It is, I repeat, the great thought which ennobles, and it ennobles because it raises to a higher plane that which is immortal in our manhood.

If I have made my meaning clear, and if you sympathize with my feelings, you will understand why I regard culture as so important to the individual and to the nation. The works of Shakespeare and of Bacon are of more value to England to-day than the memories of Blenheim or Trafalgar; and those great minds will still be living powers in the world when Marlborough and Nelson are only remembered as historical names. I therefore believe that it is the first duty of a country to foster the highest culture, and that it should be the aim of every scholar to promote this culture both by his own efforts and his active influence. A nation can become really great in no other way. We live in a country of great possibilities; and the danger is that, as with many men I have known in college, of great potential abilities, the greatness will end where it begins. The scholars of the country should have but one voice in this matter, and urge upon the government and upon individuals the duty of encouraging and supporting mental culture for its own sake. The time has passed when we can afford to limit the work of our higher institutions of learning to teaching knowledge already acquired. Henceforth the investigation of unsolved problems, and the discovery of new truth, should be one of the main objects at our American universities, and no cost grudged, which is required to maintain at them the most active minds, in every branch of knowledge which the country can be stimulated to produce. I could urge this on the self-interest of the nation as an obvious dictate of political economy. I could say, and say truly, that the culture of science will help us to develop those latent resources of which we are so proud; will enable us to grow two blades of grass where one grew before; to extract a larger per cent, of metal from our ores; to economize our coal, and in general to direct our waiting energies so that they may produce a more abundant pecuniary reward. I could tell of Galvani studying for twenty long years to no apparent purpose the twitching of frogs' hind-legs and thus sowing the seed from which has sprung the greatest invention of modern times. Or, if our Yankee impatience would be unwilling to wait half a century for the fruit to ripen, I could point to the purely theoretical investigations of organic chemistry, which in less than five years have revolutionized one of the great industries of Europe, and liberated thousands of acres for a more beneficent agriculture. This is all true, and may be urged properly if higher considerations will not prevail. It is an argument I have used in other places, but I will not use it here; although I gladly acknowledge the Providence which brings at last even material fruits to