From Immigrant to Inventor

by Michael Pupin

Tell your mother that I am happy to bear the whole responsibility for your wandering away to distant America. It is no longer distant; it is now in my heart; you have brought America to us. It was a new world in my terrestrial geography; it is now a new world in my spiritual geography.

I often think of these words now, and I firmly believe that there are many millions of people in Europe to-day who think that America is a new world in their spiritual geography. The people in Panchevo, I am certain, think so. But it needed a world war to eliminate from their minds the old superstition that this is the land of “American materialism.” The world pendulum has swung the other way, and I often wonder whether we can live up to the very high reputation which we enjoy in the opinion of a large part of the world, which now knows our virtues but does not know our shortcomings.

A short time after the Panchevo celebration, a number of scientists of the University of Belgrade, members of the Royal Serbian Academy, invited me to an informal conference, and asked me to tell them something about American science and its National Research Council in Washington. I do not think that on that occasion my discourse on this most interesting topic impressed my Serbian friends as strongly as my Panchevo discourse did. For a long time after this conference I thought of many things that I might have said, but did not say. The more I thought about it the more I was dissatisfied. I was informed several months after this conference that one of the Serbian scientists present remarked to a mutual friend that from my Panchevo address on American idealism he had been led to believe that at the Belgrade conference I would say something about idealism in American science. But I said nothing, and he inferred, therefore, that there could not be much idealism in American science, a thing which he had always suspected. Many European scientists suspected that long before he did. That permissible inference of the Serbian scientist hurt me, and it hurt the more because I felt that the omission was unpardonable. But the psychology at the Panchevo celebration was different from that at the conference in Belgrade. In Panchevo a remark was made from which, I was afraid, one might have inferred that this is a country of materialism. Nobody at the Belgrade conference suggested the thought that American science might, perhaps, have a taint of materialism. But, of course, no Serbian scientist could have suggested such a thing when the memory of the service of American science to Serbia during the typhus ravages of 1915 was still fresh in everybody’s mind.

A fireplace fed by slow-burning wood must be stirred up often to maintain a lively flame. Similarly, the flame of a slow mental combustion cannot be maintained without occasional stirring. My mental combustion at the Belgrade conference was certainly slow, and needed a stirring up, similar to that which it received in Panchevo. My early studies of American history and American traditions would have proceeded much more slowly, if it had not been for my old friend Bilharz, who stirred me up with his prejudices against American democracy, and with his everlasting complaints against the imaginary spectre which he called American materialism.

This stirring up is experienced by many American citizens of foreign birth whenever they visit their native land. Every one of these visits speeds up the Americanization process which is going on in them. I firmly believe that the amalgamation of the foreign-born would be speeded up wonderfully if we could make it obligatory that every foreign-born American citizen should revisit his native land at stated intervals of time. Had I not visited my native land so many times since my landing at Castle Garden in 1874, the memory of my early experiences in America, described in the earlier parts of this narrative, would probably have faded away completely long ago. Had I not visited Belgrade and Panchevo in 1919 I should not have been stirred up on the subject of American idealism, and particularly about the American idealism in science. It was in Belgrade and Panchevo where the stimulus was applied which revived the memory of my experiences in Columbia College, in the Universities of Cambridge and Berlin, and in my professorial work at Columbia University, and made me pass in rapid review through all my experiences which have a bearing upon American idealism, and particularly upon the idealism in American science. Ever since, I have been revolving in my mind many of the things relating to American science that I might have mentioned at the Belgrade conference, but did not mention. The painting, “Men of Progress,” which I first saw at Cooper Union in 1876, came back to my mind. The men represented in it, like Peter Cooper, McCormick, Goodyear, Morse, and others, did not represent the idealism in science which the Belgrade scientist had in mind; they were practical inventors. They were the scientific idols of the American people, but they were not idealists in science. The time for idealism in American science had not yet arrived. The Union Pacific Railroad had not yet been built when that picture was painted; the Western plains had not yet been compelled to yield their potential treasures of golden grain; and the vast quantities of coal and mineral ore were waiting anxiously to be raised to the surface of the earth to serve in the development of our vast territory between the Atlantic and the Pacific. He who could aid the people in this gigantic development became the idol of the people. The names of inventors, like McCormick, Goodyear, and Morse, were household words with the people of the United States, just as the names of Edison and of Bell are to-day. Joseph Henry, the famous scientist, was also in that historic painting, but he was in the background of it. His expression seemed to indicate that he did not feel quite at home in a group of men who were practical inventors. He was a friend of Lincoln, and his idealism in science was just as exalted as Lincoln’s idealism in political philosophy. But in those days an idealist in science attracted little attention among the people of the United States, who were busily engaged in solving their numerous economic problems. Hence Joseph Henry, the idealist in science, was practically unknown. This was the mental attitude which Europe called “American materialism” in science. De Tocqueville, the famous French traveller and keen observer, said this about us in a book which he published over seventy years ago:

It must be confessed that, among the civilized peoples of our age, there are few in which the highest sciences have made so little progress as in the United States.... The future will prove whether the passion for profound knowledge, so rare and so fruitful, can be born and developed so readily in democratic societies as in aristocracies.... The man of the North ... does not care for science as a pleasure, and only embraces it with avidity when it leads to useful applications.

To-day this criticism sounds like a national libel, but fifty years ago it was swallowed like a bitter pill which, in the opinion of many patriotic thinkers, we needed if we were to be cured of a malady which threatened to become a national calamity. The greatest leaders of scientific thought in this country pointed to our educational system, in order to prove that de Tocqueville was right and that science was neglected in our schools and colleges. Foremost amongst them were, as I have already pointed out in this narrative, Joseph Henry, President Barnard, of Columbia, President White, of Cornell, Draper, Youmans, and others. They were all idealists in science, and when they invited Tyndall to this country, fifty years ago, they invited the most eloquent apostle of scientific idealism. The great movement for higher scientific research, inaugurated in England by the immortal Maxwell and his supporters, and in this country by the great Joseph Henry and his followers, was a movement for idealism in science, or, as Andrew White called it, “hope for higher endeavor.”

When the European speaks of materialism in American science, he is resurrecting notions which de Tocqueville had in his mind when he wrote the lines quoted above. These notions were correct, but wonderful changes have taken place in this country since de Tocqueville wrote his book. If he were living now and published another edition of his famous book, I am sure that he would insert a chapter which would speak of idealism and not of materialism in American science.

What is the mental attitude which I call “idealism in science”? Before answering this question it is well to quote here from an earlier part of my narrative:

The eternal truth was, according to my understanding at that time, the sacred background of Tyndall’s scientific faith, and the works of the great scientific discoverers, their lives, and their methods of inquiry into physical phenomena were the only sources from which the human mind can draw the light which will illuminate that sacred background. He nourished that faith with a religious devotion, and his appeals in the name of that faith were irresistible. His friends in America and in England, who were glad to have him as their advocate of the cause of scientific research, had the same faith that he had, and they nourished it with the same devotion. I know to-day ... that this faith was kindled and kept alive ... by the light of the life and of the wonderful discoveries of Michael Faraday.... He was their contemporary, and his achievements, like a great search-light, showed them the true path of scientific progress.