Part 2 (2/2)
But there is another lesson to be learned from this history, which can not be too often rehea.r.s.ed in this self-sufficient age, which boasts so proudly of its practical wisdom. There were, doubtless, many practical men in that city of Bologna to smile at their sage professor, who had spent ten long years in studying, to little apparent purpose, the twitchings of frogs' hind-legs, and there was many a jest among the courtiers of Europe at the expense of the learned philosophers who ”wasted” so much time in discussing the cause of such trivial phenomena.
But how is it now?
Less than a century has pa.s.sed since Galvani's death, and in a small hut on the sh.o.r.es of Valentia Bay may be seen one of the most skillful of a new cla.s.s of practical men, representing a profession which owes its origin to Galvani and Volta. The _electrician_ is watching a spot of light on the scale of an instrument which is called a _galvanometer_.
Since the fathers fell asleep, the field of knowledge which they first entered has spread out wider and wider before the untiring explorers who have succeeded them. Oersted and Seebeck, Arago and Ampere, Faraday and our own Henry, have made wonderful discoveries in that field; and other great men, like Steinheil, Wheatstone, Morse, and Thomson, have invented ingenious instruments and appliances, by which these discoveries might be made to yield great practical results.
The spot of light, which the electrician is watching, is reflected from one of the latest of these inventions, the reflecting galvanometer of Thomson. He and his a.s.sistants had been watching by turns the same spot for several days, since the Great Eastern had steamed from the bay, paying out a cable of insulated wire. These electricians had no anxiety as to the result, for daily signals had been exchanged between the s.h.i.+p and the sh.o.r.e, as hundreds after hundreds of miles of this electrical conductor had been laid on the bed of the broad ocean. The coast of Newfoundland had already been reached, and they were only waiting for the landing of the cable at the now far-distant end.
At length the light quivers, and the spot begins to move. It answers to concerted signals. And soon the operator spells out the joyful message.
The ocean has been spanned with an electric nerve, and the New World responds to the greetings of the Old.
Here is something practical, which all can appreciate, and all are ready to honor. We honor the courage which conceived, the skill which executed, and, above all, the success which crowned the undertaking. But do we not forget that professor of Bologna, with his frogs' legs, who sowed the seed from which all this has sprung? He labored without hope of temporal reward, stimulated by the pure love of truth, and the grain which he planted has brought forth this abundant harvest. Do we not forget, also, that succession of equally n.o.ble men, Volta, and Oersted, and Faraday, with many other not less devoted investigators of electrical science, without whose unselfish labors the great result never could have been achieved? Such men, of course, need no recognition at our hands, and I ask the question not for their sakes, but for ours.
The intellectual elevation of the lives they led was their all-sufficient reward.
It is, however, of the utmost importance for us, citizens of a country with almost unlimited resources, that we should recognize what are the real springs of true national greatness and enduring influence. In this age of material interests, the hand is too ready to say to the head, ”I have no need of thee”; and, amid the ephemeral applause which follows the realization of some triumph over matter, we are apt to be deceived, and not observe whence the power came. We a.s.sociate the great invention with some man of affairs man who overcame the last material obstacle, and who, although worthy of all praise, probably added very little to the total wealth of knowledge of which the invention was an immediate consequence; and, not seeing the antecedents, we are apt to underrate the part which the student or scientific investigator may have contributed to the result.
It is idle, for example, to speak of the electric telegraph as invented by any single man. It was a growth of time, and many of the men who contributed to win this great victory of mind over s.p.a.ce ”builded far better than they knew.” As I view the subject, that invention is as much a gift of Providence as if the details had been supernaturally revealed. But, whatever may be our speculative views, it is of the utmost importance to the welfare of our community that we should realize the fact that purely theoretical scientific study, pursued for truth's sake, is the essential prerequisite for such inventions. Knowledge is the condition of invention. The old Latin word _invenio_ signifies _to meet with_, as well as to _find_, and these great gifts of G.o.d are _met with_ along the pathway of civilization; but the throng of the world pa.s.ses them unnoticed, for only those can recognize the treasure whose minds have been stored with the knowledge which the scholar has discovered and made known.
If, then, as no one will deny, science and scholars.h.i.+p are the powers by which improvements in the useful arts are made, I might appeal to your self-interest to support and cherish them. But I should despise myself for appealing to such a motive, and you for requiring it. The supreme importance of science and scholars.h.i.+p to a nation does not depend in the least on the circ.u.mstance that important practical results may follow.
When, as in the case of Galvani's frogs, they come in the order of Providence, let us thank G.o.d for them as a gift which we had no right either to expect or demand. Science, if studied successfully, must be studied for the pure love of truth; and, if we serve her solely for mercenary ends, her truths, the only gold she offers, will turn to dross in our hands, and we shall degrade ourselves in proportion as we dishonor her.
Galvani, and Volta, and Oersted, who discovered the truths of which the electric telegraph is a simple application, sure to be made as soon as the time was ripe, are not the less to be honored because they died before the fullness of that time had come. We honor them for the truths they discovered, and the l.u.s.tre of their consecrated lives could be neither enhanced nor impaired by subsequent events; and it is because I am persuaded that such lives are the salt of the world, the saviours of society, that I would lead you to cherish and sustain them; and, that I may enforce this conclusion, allow me to ask your attention to another historical incident, which presents a striking parallelism to the last.
I must take you back to a period which we, of a nation born but yesterday, regard as distant, but which was one of the most noted epochs of modern history--the age of Luther and the Reformation. I must ask you to accompany me to the small town of Allenstein, near Frauenberg, in Eastern Prussia, where, on May 23, 1543, there lay dying one of the great benefactors of mankind.
This man, old at seventy years, ”bent and furrowed with labor, but in whose eye the fire of genius was still glowing,” was then known as one of the most learned men of his time. Doctor of medicine as well as of theology, Canon of Frauenberg, Honorary Professor of Bologna and Rome, while devoting his leisure to study, he had pa.s.sed a life of active benevolence in administering to the bodily as well as the spiritual wants of the ignorant people among whom his lot had been cast. He was also a great mechanical genius, and, by various labor-saving machines, of his own invention, he had contributed greatly to the welfare of the surrounding country.
But the superst.i.tious peasants, although they had hitherto reverenced the great man as their best friend and benefactor, had been recently incited by his enemies and rivals in the church to curse him as a heretic and a wizard. A few days back he had been the unwilling witness of one of those out-of-door spectacles, so common at that time, in which his scientific opinions had been travestied, his charities ridiculed, and his devoted life made the object of slander and reproach. This ingrat.i.tude of his flock had broken his heart, and he could not recover from the blow.
The occasion of this outburst of fanaticism was the approaching publication of a work in which he had dared to question the received opinions of theologians and schoolmen, in regard to cosmogony. He had, forsooth, denied that the visible firmament was a solid azure-colored sh.e.l.l, to which the sun and planets were fastened, and through whose opened doors the rain descended. He had proved that the sun was the center of the system, around which the earth and planets revolved, and, with his clear scientific vision, he had been able to gain glimpses, at least, of the grand conceptions of modern astronomy: For this man was Nicolas Copernicus, and the expected book was his great work--”De Orbium Coelestium Revolutionibus”--destined to form the broad basis of astronomical science.
The work was printing at Nuremberg, and the last proofs had been returned; but reports had come that a similar outburst of fanaticism was raging at that place, that a mob had burned the ma.n.u.script on the public square, and had threatened to break the press should the printing proceed. But, thanks to G.o.d! the old man was not to die before the hour of triumph came. While still conscious, a horse, covered with foam, gallops to the door of his humble dwelling, and an armed messenger enters the chamber, who, breathless with haste, places in the hands of the dying man a volume still wet from the press. He has only strength to return a smile of recognition, and murmur the last words:
”Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine.”
Grand close of a n.o.ble life! The seed has been sown--what could we desire more?
Again the centuries roll on--not one, but three--while the seed grows to a great tree, which overshadows the nations. Great minds have never been wanting to cherish and prime it, like Tycho Brahe and Kepler, Galileo and Newton, Laplace and Lagrange; and although at times some, while lingering in the deep shade of the foliage, may have lost sight of the summit, the n.o.ble tree has ever pointed upward to direct aspiration and encourage hope.
On the evening of the 24th of September, 1846, in the Observatory of Berlin, a trained astronomical observer was carefully measuring the position of a faint star in the constellation Capricorn. Only the day before, he had received from Le Verrier a letter announcing the result of that remarkable investigation which has made the name of this distinguished French astronomer so justly celebrated. By the studies of the great men who succeeded Copernicus, his system had become so perfected as to enable the astronomer to predict, with unerring certainty, the paths of the planets through the heavens. But there was one failing case. The planet Ura.n.u.s, then supposed to be the outer planet of the solar system, wandered from the path which theory a.s.signed to it; and although the deviations were but small, yet any discrepancy between theory and observation in so accurate a science as astronomy could not be overlooked.
Long before this, the hypothesis had been advanced that the deviations were caused by the attractive force of an unseen and still more distant planet; but, as no such planet had been discovered, the hypothesis had remained until now wholly barren. The hypothesis, however, was reasonable, and furnished the only conceivable explanation of the facts; and, moreover, if true, the received system of astronomy ought to be able to a.s.sign the position and magnitude of the disturbing body, the magnitude and direction of the displacements being given.
This possibility was generally appreciated by astronomers, and the very great length and difficulty of the mathematical calculation which the investigation involved was probably the reason that no one had hitherto undertaken it. Le Verrier, however, had both the courage and the youthful strength required for the work. And now the great work had been done; and, on the 18th of September, Le Verrier had sent to the Observatory of Berlin his communication announcing the final result, namely, that the planet would be found about 5 to the east of the star Delta of Capricorn.
The letter containing this announcement was received by Galle, at Berlin, on the 23d, and it was Galle whom we left measuring the position of that faint star on the evening of the 24th. It so happened that a chart of that portion of the heavens had recently been prepared by the Berlin Observatory, and was on the eve of publication; and, on the very evening he received the letter, Galle had found, near the position a.s.signed by Le Verrier, a faint star, which was not marked on this chart. The object differed in appearance from the surrounding stars, but still it was perfectly possible that it might be a fixed star which had escaped previous observation.
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