Crocker and I were given to understand that any additional equipment during the first year would have to be bought from contributions outside of the university. We raised some money by giving a course of twelve popular lectures for which we charged ten dollars per person. Each lecture lasted two hours; we were somewhat dubious about their quality, and so we provided a generous quantity. We raised in this manner three hundred dollars and bought additional equipment, but no two young scientists ever worked harder to earn three hundred dollars. The experience, however, was worth many times that amount. Our audience consisted of business men and lawyers, who were either interested in the electrical industries, or expected to become interested. They had hardly any previous scientific training. It took much judgment and skill to talk science to these people without shooting much above their heads. Every one of them believed that the electrical science was in its infancy, and that most of its useful applications were obtained empirically by a rule of thumb. When we told them that the electrical science was one of the most exact of all physical sciences, some shook their heads and exhibited considerable scepticism. One of them asked me: “Doctor, do you know what electricity is?” “No,” said I, and he added another question: “Then how can you have an exact science of electricity when you do not even know what electricity is?” To this I retorted: “Do you know what matter is? Of course you do not, nor does anybody else know it, and yet who will deny that there are exact sciences relating to material things? Do you deny that astronomy is an exact science?” It is a difficult thing to make unscientific people understand that science studies first and foremost the _activities of things and not their ultimate nature_.