Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/241

Rh State, and be of the Commonwealth. With singular and unconscious satire it tells the legislature to have on eye "to the main chance," and, but for its fidelity to its highest instincts and its obstinate silence, might be a symbol good enough for the place.

Now, after the office and the purse have taken their votaries from the educated class, the ablest men are certainly not left behind. Three roads open before our young Hercules as he leaves college, having respectively as fingerpost, the pen, the office, and the purse. Few follow the road of letters. This need not be much complained of nay, it might be rejoiced in, if the purse and the office in their modes of power did represent the higher consciousness of mankind. But no one contends it is so.

Still there are men who devote themselves to some literary callings which have no connection with political office, and which ore not pursued for the sake of great wealth. Such men produce the greater part of the permanent literature of the country. They are eminently scholars; permanent scholars who act by their scholarcraft, not by the state-craft of the politician, or the pursecraft of the capitalist. How are these men paying their debt and performing their function? Tho answer must be found in the science and the literature of the land.

American science is something of which we may well be proud. Mr. Liebig, in Germany, has found it necessary to defend himself from the charge of following science for the loaves and fishes thereof; and he declares that he espoused chemistry not for her wealthy dower, not even for the services her possible children might render to mankind, but solely for her own sweet sake. Amongst the English race, on both sides of the ocean, science is loved rather for the fruit than the blossom; its service to the body is thought of more value than its service to tho mind. A man's respectability would be in danger, in America, if he loved any science better than the money or fame it might bring. It is characteristic of us that a scholar should write for reputation and gold. Here, as elsewhere, the unprofitable parts of science fall to the lot of poor men. When the rich man's son has the natural calling that way, public opinion would dissuade him from the study of nature. The greatest scientific attainments do not give a