Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

listen to the Sages of the Society, and, after referring to the subject assigned him as being far too large for the tenminute rule sagaciously adopted by the Committee, continued as follows:

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:-With your permission, I will change the subject. When I found that I was actually booked to speak, I gave very close attention to what was being said, in the expectation that some one of the speakers, by a chance word, would furnish me with a theme. President Gilman supplied the topic in his mention of the name of Benjamin Thompson, more widely known as Count Rumford, the American founder of the Royal Institution of England. A great deal has come to the world from that institution, though Count Rumford had not much money of his own to conduct it with, and did not succeed in obtaining much from others, but it is worth while to consider what the world has gained by the simple endowment of a chair for original research in that institution as compared with the outcome from institutions with princely endowments in this and other countries, where the money has been largely expended in stately architectural structures.

Let me illustrate. It happened once to me to make a visit to a neighboring city (I won't say what city) with a very dear friend of mine, who had endowed a university. Not far from our hotel on that occasion, was an institution that had also been endowed very largely by an eminent American. If I mistake not the amount of money that was put into the building and its equipment was about half a million of dollars. I went into it with the son of the gentleman whom I speak of, and found there a library, rather choice, but not very large. But in looking around its shelves I saw but few books that were not upon the shelves of other

libraries in the same city. There were five persons in the library at the time looking at the books. We passed out of that and went into the basement, and there we found an orchestra playing some very fine scientific music, and in front was an audience hardly more numerous than the orchestra itself. There were perhaps forty persons there, mainly ladies, and from their appearance belonging to wealthy families living in the neighborhood of that building, every one of whom could have paid for that sort of luxury. There was the result of an endowment of half a million of dollars! A stately and expensive building-a library that was not better than other libraries in that town, and an orchestra playing scientific music to people every one of whom could pay for it themselves and for their families! Certainly that was a very meagre result for that much money.

Well, gentlemen, similar results may be seen in other parts of this country. There are a great many magnificent structures put up from these grand endowments. The first thing the trustees appear to have in their minds is to employ an architect to put up a monumental structure which drains the fund nearly to the bottom, and after that comes what? Poverty. Poverty in the administration, nil as to the results in the way of promoting and diffusing useful knowledge among men. I won't go over them, you know where these buildings are and what the results are.

Let me now return to President Gilman's mention of Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford), a Massachusetts man, who left this country about the beginning of the Revolution because his neighbors disputed his loyalty. He was a man of the Franklin type-an inquiring man, an investigating man. Nothing passed before him that he did not want to know

McKean.]

[March 15.

something more about it. Even a wheelbarrow was not beneath his notice. He would intivestigate a lamp, or a stove, or a kitchen, or a smoky chimney, or the phenomena of heat, or light, just as Franklin did. Through his efforts, with some of his money and what he could induce a few others to contribute, the Royal Institution of London was founded, and he left at his death some money for medals as prizes for original research. I hardly agree with President Gilman that the best result of Benjamin Thompson's gifts and legacies came out of the Harvard medal and other prizes. In my judgment the best results that came out of Rumford's work was the Royal Institution. It was not provided with a grand architectural home at the expense of the foundation fund. I do not know what kind of housing it has now, but for a long period of its career it had a very plain habitation, and yet from that small amount of money given, or procured to be given, by Count Rumford to that institution, we have Sir William Young, Sir Humphrey Davy, Michael Faraday and John Tyndall, and all the progress in useful knowledge they have given to the world. No money was wasted there upon a structure. He simply, with the aid that came to him and to his idea, provided and en.dowed a chair in which a man of philosophic mind, a man with a turn for scientific investigation could give his whole time to original research, the sort of investigation that has moved the world along. It was not required that the man who occupied that chair should be occupied all night long as a teacher, in getting up his lectures for his class; it was not required that the occupant of that chair should be subjected to the drudgery of life-to earn money by which his family was to be supported. But there was an endowment, a small endowment, which gave to its occupant a sufficient

1880.]

[McKean.

sum of money to carry him along, and he was not required to do a thing except to carry on investigations in the line of original research; and the outcome to the world are the four magnificent characters named a little while ago, with their grand results in chemistry, electricity, physics, and natural sciences generally.

That is an example for us in these days in this country. There has been in this room to-night a man who ought to have been the Pasteur of the United States if he had been provided for, as those men were in the Royal Institution, and it would have taken but little money to do it. There has been a man here to-night if he had been taken care of in the same way, and if he did not have to go through the daily drudgery to earn money to take care of his household, would have been, and has the ability to be the Faraday of the United States. We do not provide as many of that kind of men for the world as we ought to do in this country. I am not unmindful that we have students in this country who are very distinguished; I am not unmindful of the Le Contes, Leidys, Copes, Marshes, Newcombs, Drapers, Mitchells, Rutherfords, and others, but we do not give to the world as many as we ought, and we do not do justice to the men whose names ought to stand in emulation with those of men in other countries like IIuxley, Pasteur, Helmholtz and Tyndall in this day in England and on the continent of Europe. It would not take much money to do all this, very little money indeed. The example set by Benjamin Count Rumford is an example to be commended and remembered, that ought to be made known far and wide as far as the influence of the members of the American Philosophical Society can reach. Endowed chairs for original research in which to place our able men, are the equipment for our day-chairs

so endowed that the occupants shall be relieved from the drudgery of teaching and the necessity for this day's work to pay for the next day's living. We have able men who need no more than this to place them as peers in the promotion of useful knowledge with the best in the world. This plan, gentlemen, is, in my estimation, worth more to the country and the world than all the monumental buildings for university and college purposes in all our laud, and it costs but a tithe of the money. President Gilman can get as good and beneficial work out of the old warehouses-the old buildings and back kitchens-in which the Johns Hopkins University is now housed, as he could if it were housed in the Capitol at Washington. The one building and equipment to which I have already referred cost as much as it would to endow ten chairs, and its outcome is not, or not long ago was not, equal to a tenth part of what came from the chair Michael Faraday occupied.

I thank you, gentlemen, for your attention.

10. The Spirit of a Philosophical Society,

Prof. J. P. LESLEY, Philadelphia.

"Science moves, but slowly slowly, creeping on. "—Tennyson.

Professor Lesley, in response, said:

The serious and the gay things of our existence are so blended in our experience as individuals, that a very slight apology will be demanded of me, if, on this joyous occasion, I venture to suggest a few grave topics of reflection.

We meet as members of a Society which boasts of venerable antiquity-after an American fashion-or rather on an American scale; a boast which would certainly be ridicu

« AnteriorContinuar »