Six Lectures on Light: Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873Tyndall, John
Science
Six Lectures on Light: Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873
Tyndall, John
Light
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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