Should you ask me what are the most hopeful features in the great establishment which you are now dedicating, I would say that they are not alone to be found in the size of your unequalled telescope, nor in the cost of the outfit, but in the fact that your authorities have shown their appreciation of the requirements of success by adding to the material outfit of the establishment the three men whose works I have described.
Gentlemen of the trustees, allow me to commend to your fostering care the men at the end of the telescope. The constitution of the astronomer shows curious and interesting features. If he is destined to advance the science by works of real genius, he must, like the poet, be born, not made. The born astronomer, when placed in command of a telescope, goes about using it as naturally and effectively as the babe avails itself of its mother's breast. He sees intuitively what less gifted men have to learn by long study and tedious experiment. He is moved to celestial knowledge by a passion which dominates his nature. He can no more avoid doing astronomical work, whether in the line of observations or research, than a poet can chain his Pegasus to earth. I do not mean by this that education and training will be of no use to him. They will certainly accelerate his early progress. If he is to become great on the mathematical side, not only must his genius have a bend in that direction, but he must have the means of pursuing his studies. And yet I have seen so many failures of men who had the best instruction, and so many successes of men who scarcely learned anything of their teachers, that I sometimes ask whether the great American celestial mechanician of the twentieth century will be a graduate of a university or of the backwoods.
Is the man thus moved to the exploration of nature by an unconquerable passion more to be envied or pitied? In no other pursuit does success come with such certainty to him who deserves it. No life is so enjoyable as that whose energies are devoted to following out the inborn impulses of one's nature. The investigator of truth is little subject to the disappointments which await the ambitious man in other fields of activity. It is pleasant to be one of a brotherhood extending over the world, in which no rivalry exists except that which comes out of trying to do better work than any one else, while mutual admiration stifles jealousy. And yet, with all these advantages, the experience of the astronomer may have its dark side. As he sees his field widening faster than he can advance he is impressed with the littleness of all that can be done in one short life. He feels the same want of successors to pursue his work that the founder of a dynasty may feel for heirs to occupy his throne. He has no desire to figure in history as a Napoleon of science whose conquests must terminate with his life. Even during his active career his work may be such a kind as to require the co-operation of others and the active support of the public. If he is disappointed in commanding these requirements, if he finds neither co-operation nor support, if some great scheme to which he may have devoted much of his life thus proves to be only a castle in the air, he may feel that nature has dealt hardly with him in not endowing him with passions like to those of other men.
In treating a theme of perennial interest one naturally tries to fancy what the future may have in store If the traveller, contemplating the ruins of some ancient city which in the long ago teemed with the life and activities of generations of men, sees every stone instinct with emotion and the dust alive with memories of the past, may he not be similarly impressed when he feels that he is looking around upon a seat of future empire—a region where generations yet unborn may take a leading part in moulding the history of the world? What may we not expect of that energy which in sixty years has transformed a straggling village into one of the world's great centres of commerce? May it not exercise a powerful influence on the destiny not only of the country but of the world? If so, shall the power thus to be exercised prove an agent of beneficence, diffusing light and life among nations, or shall it be the opposite?
The time must come ere long when wealth shall outgrow the field in which it can be profitably employed. In what direction shall its possessors then look? Shall they train a posterity which will so use its power as to make the world better that it has lived in it? Will the future heir to great wealth prefer the intellectual life to the life of pleasure?
We can have no more hopeful answer to these questions than the establishment of this great university in the very focus of the commercial activity of the West. Its connection with the institution we have been dedicating suggests some thoughts on science as a factor in that scheme of education best adapted to make the power of a wealthy community a benefit to the race at large. When we see what a factor science has been in our present civilization, how it has transformed the world and increased the means of human enjoyment by enabling men to apply the powers of nature to their own uses, it is not wonderful that it should claim the place in education hitherto held by classical studies. In the contest which has thus arisen I take no part but that of a peace-maker, holding that it is as important to us to keep in touch with the traditions of our race, and to cherish the thoughts which have come down to us through the centuries, as it is to enjoy and utilize what the present has to offer us. Speaking from this point of view, I would point out the error of making the utilitarian applications of knowledge the main object in its pursuit. It is an historic fact that abstract science—science pursued without any utilitarian end—has been at the base of our progress in the utilization of knowledge. If in the last century such men as Galvani and Volta had been moved by any other motive than love of penetrating the secrets of nature they would never have pursued the seemingly useless experiments they did, and the foundation of electrical science would not have been laid. Our present applications of electricity did not become possible until Ohm's mathematical laws of the electric current, which when first made known seemed little more than mathematical curiosities, had become the common property of inventors. Professional pride on the part of our own Henry led him, after making the discoveries which rendered the telegraph possible, to go no further in their application, and to live and die without receiving a dollar of the millions which the country has won through his agency.
In the spirit of scientific progress thus shown we have patriotism in its highest form—a sentiment which does not seek to benefit the country at the expense of the world, but to benefit the world by means of one's country. Science has its competition, as keen as that which is the life of commerce. But its rivalries are over the question who shall contribute the most and the best to the sum total of knowledge; who shall give the most, not who shall take the most. Its animating spirit is love of truth. Its pride is to do the greatest good to the greatest number. It embraces not only the whole human race but all nature in its scope. The public spirit of which this city is the focus has made the desert blossom as the rose, and benefited humanity by the diffusion of the material products of the earth. Should you ask me how it is in the future to use its influence for the benefit of humanity at large, I would say, look at the work now going on in these precincts, and study its spirit. Here are the agencies which will make "the voice of law the harmony of the world." Here is the love of country blended with love of the race. Here the love of knowledge is as unconfined as your commercial enterprise. Let not your youth come hither merely to learn the forms of vertebrates and the properties of oxides, but rather to imbibe that catholic spirit which, animating their growing energies, shall make the power they are to wield an agent of beneficence to all mankind.