* * * * *

This, then, is the core of the whole matter as regards science.  It must be cultivated for its own sake, for the pure love of truth, rather than for the applause or profit that it brings.  And now my occupation in America is well-nigh gone.  Still I will bespeak your tolerance for a few concluding remarks, in reference to the men who have bequeathed to us the vast body of knowledge of which I have sought to give you some faint idea in these lectures.  What was the motive that spurred them on?  What urged them to those battles and those victories over reticent Nature, which have become the heritage of the human race?  It is never to be forgotten that not one of those great investigators, from Aristotle down to Stokes and Kirchhoff, had any practical end in view, according to the ordinary definition of the word ‘practical.’  They did not propose to themselves money as an end, and knowledge as a means of obtaining it.  For the most part, they nobly reversed this process, made knowledge their end, and such money as they possessed the means of obtaining it.

We see to-day the issues of their work in a thousand practical forms, and this may be thought sufficient to justify, if not ennoble, their efforts.  But they did not work for such issues; their reward was of a totally different kind.  In what way different?  We love clothes, we love luxuries, we love fine equipages, we love money, and any man who can point to these as the result of his efforts in life, justifies these results before all the world.  In America and England, more especially, he is a ‘practical’ man.  But I would appeal confidently to this assembly whether such things exhaust the demands of human nature?  The very presence here for six inclement nights of this great audience, embodying so much of the mental force and refinement of this vast city,[26] is an answer to my question.  I need not tell such an assembly that there are joys of the intellect as well as joys of the body, or that these pleasures of the spirit constituted the reward of our great investigators.  Led on by the whisperings of natural truth, through pain and self-denial, they often pursued their work.  With the ruling passion strong in death, some of them, when no longer able to hold a pen, dictated to their friends the last results of their labours, and then rested from them for ever.

Could we have seen these men at work, without any knowledge of the consequences of their work, what should we have thought of them?  To the uninitiated, in their day, they might often appear as big children playing with soap-bubbles and other trifles.  It is so to this hour.  Could you watch the true investigator—­your Henry or your Draper, for example—­in his laboratory, unless animated by his spirit, you could hardly understand what keeps him there.  Many of the objects which rivet his attention might appear to you utterly trivial; and if you were to ask him what is the use of his