Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 70.djvu/295



E are here, as I understand, to unveil memorial busts of Americans distinguished in science. I, Sir, am honored by the privilege of speaking of Benjamin Franklin. This man, the father of American Science, was possessed of mental gifts unequaled in his day. Even yet he holds the highest place in the intellectual peerage of a land where, in his time, men had few interests which were not material or political. But no man entirely escapes the despotic influences of his period. Thus in every life there are unfulfilled possibilities, and so it was that, paraphrasing Goldsmith, we may say that Franklin to country gave up what was meant for mankind, when with deep regret he resigned, in middle life, all hope of whole-souled devotion to science. When most productive his scientific fertility was the more remarkable because of the other forms of dutiful activity which in a life that knew no rest left small leisure for those hours of quiet thought without which science is unfruitful of result.