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 associate 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 space "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 God are met with along the pathway of civilization; but the throng of the world passes 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 scholarship 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 scholarship to a nation does not depend in the least on the circumstance 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 God 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 lustre 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 passed 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 superstitious 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 ingratitude 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 shell, 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 Cœlestium 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 manuscript on the public square, and had threatened to break the press should the printing proceed. But, thanks to God! 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."