Certainly, there ought to be some limit to the inventor's claims on a grateful people. Admit to the utmost the inventor's merit; rank him in the fore front of the long procession of the great benefactors of the human race; rank him before Faraday, before Volta, and before Newton; rank him before Washington and the Fathers of the Republic; rank him before the patriots and martyrs who have died in the defense of human rights, or in attestation of the truth: and yet, in virtue of these transcendent merits, should he or his representatives be authorized to tax his countrymen millions on millions of dollars a year? Surely, there could not be a greater travesty of our motto, "Noblesse Oblige"; and a system which gives a legal sanction to such abuses will soon force on the public mind that most convincing of all proofs of perversion, the reductio ad absurdum.
It is not, however, our intention to discuss the abuses of the patent laws, much less to suggest the required remedies. We clearly see the difficulties of the subject, and we perceive that it involves questions, both of political economy and of jurisprudence, with which we are not competent to deal. Our interest is solely to maintain the dignity of scientific culture, and to demand for it the respect to which it is entitled; but which is seriously compromised by the mercenary and utilitarian spirit that the patent laws encourage and make prominent. We are most anxious that the intelligence of our people should fully recognize the fact that, among the students of science in this practical age, there is such a thing as devotion to the truth for the truth's sake; that throughout the length and breadth of these United States may be found many an earnest student of Nature who, under great disadvantages, and often at great personal sacrifice, is devoting the noblest intellectual power, and the highest inventive skill, to the sole end of advancing knowledge: and we rejoice to believe that the time will come when it will be plainly seen by all that these silent workers have been laying broad and deep-enduring foundations, on which national greatness can securely rest.
XIII.
THE SPIRITUAL LIFE.[Q]
We have reached the end of our long journey, and now we are ready to turn back and start for home.
The Reis is at his helm, the great sail is furled and bound closely to the long yard; for, as the wind during the early spring blows here constantly from the north, we must depend on the rapid current of the Nile to bear us back to civilization: a river which, flowing through so many generations of men from the unknown to the unlimited, not unfitly typifies the course of history; and as, in imagination, we drift with this historical stream, we can not fail to learn the lesson which the associations and the scenes are so calculated to teach. That lesson is the grandeur, the glory, and the immortality of the spiritual life of man.
We go back six thousand years, and find the Sphinx, as to-day, looking toward the rising sun, and pondering the problem of human destiny.
The pyramid-builders come, and erect those neighboring piles to preserve their bodies when dead for that glorious destiny in which they trust.