Part 20

The Civil War naturally exerted a depressing influence upon our scientific activity. The cultivator of knowledge is no less patriotic than his fellow-citizens, and vies with them in devotion to the public welfare. The active interest which such cultivators took, first in the prosecution of the war and then in the restoration of the Union, naturally distracted their attention from their favorite pursuits. But no sooner was political stability reached than a wave of intellectual activity set in, which has gone on increasing up to the present time. If it be true that never before in our history has so much attention been given to education as now; that never before did so many men devote themselves to the diffusion of knowledge, it is no less true that never was astronomical work so energetically pursued among us as at the present time.

One deplorable result of the Civil War was that Gould's Astronomical Journal had to be suspended. Shortly after the restoration of peace, instead of re-establishing the journal, its founder conceived the project of exploring the southern heavens. The northern hemisphere being the seat of civilization, that portion of the sky which could not be seen from our latitudes was comparatively neglected. What had been done in the southern hemisphere was mostly the occasional work of individuals and of one or two permanent observatories. The latter were so few in number and so meagre in their outfit that a splendid field was open to the inquirer. Gould found the patron which he desired in the government of the Argentine Republic, on whose territory he erected what must rank in the future as one of the memorable astronomical establishments of the world. His work affords a most striking example of the principle that the astronomer is more important than his instruments. Not only were the means at the command of the Argentine Observatory slender in the extreme when compared with those of the favored institutions of the North, but, from the very nature of the case, the Argentine Republic could not supply trained astronomers. The difficulties thus growing out of the administration cannot be overestimated. And yet the sixteen great volumes in which the work of the institution has been published will rank in the future among the classics of astronomy.

Another wonderful focus of activity, in which one hardly knows whether he ought most to admire the exhaustless energy or the admirable ingenuity which he finds displayed, is the Harvard Observatory. Its work has been aided by gifts which have no parallel in the liberality that prompted them. Yet without energy and skill such gifts would have been useless. The activity of the establishment includes both hemispheres. Time would fail to tell how it has not only mapped out important regions of the heavens from the north to the south pole, but analyzed the rays of light which come from hundreds of thousands of stars by recording their spectra in permanence on photographic plates.

The work of the establishment is so organized that a new star cannot appear in any part of the heavens nor a known star undergo any noteworthy change without immediate detection by the photographic eye of one or more little telescopes, all-seeing and never-sleeping policemen that scan the heavens unceasingly while the astronomer may sleep, and report in the morning every case of irregularity in the proceedings of the heavenly bodies.

Yet another example, showing what great results may be obtained with limited means, is afforded by the Lick Observatory, on Mount Hamilton, California. During the ten years of its activity its astronomers have made it known the world over by works and discoveries too varied and numerous to be even mentioned at the present time.

The astronomical work of which I have thus far spoken has been almost entirely that done at observatories. I fear that I may in this way have strengthened an erroneous impression that the seat of important astronomical work is necessarily connected with an observatory. It must be admitted that an institution which has a local habitation and a magnificent building commands public attention so strongly that valuable work done elsewhere may be overlooked. A very important part of astronomical work is done away from telescopes and meridian circles and requires nothing but a good library for its prosecution. One who is devoted to this side of the subject may often feel that the public does not appreciate his work at its true relative value from the very fact that he has no great buildings or fine instruments to show. I may therefore be allowed to claim as an important factor in the American astronomy of the last half-century an institution of which few have heard and which has been overlooked because there was nothing about it to excite attention.

In 1849 the American Nautical Almanac office was established by a Congressional appropriation. The title of this publication is somewhat misleading in suggesting a simple enlargement of the family almanac which the sailor is to hang up in his cabin for daily use. The fact is that what started more than a century ago as a nautical almanac has since grown into an astronomical ephemeris for the publication of everything pertaining to times, seasons, eclipses, and the motions of the heavenly bodies. It is the work in which astronomical observations made in all the great observatories of the world are ultimately utilized for scientific and public purposes. Each of the leading nations of western Europe issues such a publication. When the preparation and publication of the American ephemeris was decided upon the office was first established in Cambridge, the seat of Harvard University, because there could most readily be secured the technical knowledge of mathematics and theoretical astronomy necessary for the work.

A field of activity was thus opened, of which a number of able young men who have since earned distinction in various walks of life availed themselves. The head of the office, Commander Davis, adopted a policy well fitted to promote their development. He translated the classic work of Gauss, Theoria Motus Corporum Celestium, and made the office a sort of informal school, not, indeed, of the modern type, but rather more like the classic grove of Hellas, where philosophers conducted their discussions and profited by mutual attrition. When, after a few years of experience, methods were well established and a routine adopted, the office was removed to Washington, where it has since remained. The work of preparing the ephemeris has, with experience, been reduced to a matter of routine which may be continued indefinitely, with occasional changes in methods and data, and improvements to meet the increasing wants of investigators.

The mere preparation of the ephemeris includes but a small part of the work of mathematical calculation and investigation required in astronomy. One of the great wants of the science to-day is the reduction of the observations made during the first half of the present century, and even during the last half of the preceding one. The labor which could profitably be devoted to this work would be more than that required in any one astronomical observatory. It is unfortunate for this work that a great building is not required for its prosecution because its needfulness is thus very generally overlooked by that portion of the public interested in the progress of science. An organization especially devoted to it is one of the scientific needs of our time.

In such an epoch-making age as the present it is dangerous to cite any one step as making a new epoch. Yet it may be that when the historian of the future reviews the science of our day he will find the most remarkable feature of the astronomy of the last twenty years of our century to be the discovery that this steadfast earth of which the poets have told us is not, after all, quite steadfast; that the north and south poles move about a very little, describing curves so complicated that they have not yet been fully marked out. The periodic variations of latitude thus brought about were first suspected about 1880, and announced with some modest assurance by Kustner, of Berlin, a few years later. The progress of the views of astronomical opinion from incredulity to confidence was extremely slow until, about 1890, Chandler, of the United States, by an exhaustive discussion of innumerable results of observations, showed that the latitude of every point on the earth was subject to a double oscillation, one having a period of a year, the other of four hundred and twenty-seven days.

Notwithstanding the remarkable parallel between the growth of American astronomy and that of your city, one cannot but fear that if a foreign observer had been asked only half a dozen years ago at what point in the United States a great school of theoretical and practical astronomy, aided by an establishment for the exploration of the heavens, was likely to be established by the munificence of private citizens, he would have been wiser than most foreigners had he guessed Chicago. Had this place been suggested to him, I fear he would have replied that were it possible to utilize celestial knowledge in acquiring earthly wealth, here would be the most promising seat for such a school. But he would need to have been a little wiser than his generation to reflect that wealth is at the base of all progress in knowledge and the liberal arts; that it is only when men are relieved from the necessity of devoting all their energies to the immediate wants of life that they can lead the intellectual life, and that we should therefore look to the most enterprising commercial centre as the likeliest seat for a great scientific institution.

Now we have the school, and we have the observatory, which we hope will in the near future do work that will cast lustre on the name of its founder as well as on the astronomers who may be associated with it. You will, I am sure, pardon me if I make some suggestions on the subject of the future needs of the establishment. We want this newly founded institution to be a great success, to do work which shall show that the intellectual productiveness of your community will not be allowed to lag behind its material growth The public is very apt to feel that when some munificent patron of science has mounted a great telescope under a suitable dome, and supplied all the apparatus which the astronomer wants to use, success is assured. But such is not the case. The most important requisite, one more difficult to command than telescopes or observatories, may still be wanting. A great telescope is of no use without a man at the end of it, and what the telescope may do depends more upon this appendage than upon the instrument itself. The place which telescopes and observatories have taken in astronomical history are by no means proportional to their dimensions. Many a great instrument has been a mere toy in the hands of its owner. Many a small one has become famous.

Twenty years ago there was here in your own city a modest little instrument which, judged by its size, could not hold up its head with the great ones even of that day. It was the private property of a young man holding no scientific position and scarcely known to the public. And yet that little telescope is to-day among the famous ones of the world, having made memorable advances in the astronomy of double stars, and shown its owner to be a worthy successor of the Herschels and Struves in that line of work.

A hundred observers might have used the appliances of the Lick Observatory for a whole generation without finding the fifth satellite of Jupiter; without successfully photographing the cloud forms of the Milky Way; without discovering the extraordinary patches of nebulous light, nearly or quite invisible to the human eye, which fill some regions of the heavens.

When I was in Zurich last year I paid a visit to the little, but not unknown, observatory of its famous polytechnic school. The professor of astronomy was especially interested in the observations of the sun with the aid of the spectroscope, and among the ingenious devices which he described, not the least interesting was the method of photographing the sun by special rays of the spectrum, which had been worked out at the Kenwood Observatory in Chicago. The Kenwood Observatory is not, I believe, in the eye of the public, one of the noteworthy institutions of your city which every visitor is taken to see, and yet this invention has given it an important place in the science of our day.

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.

XIX

THE UNIVERSE AS AN ORGANISM

If I were called upon to convey, within the compass of a single sentence, an idea of the trend of recent astronomical and physical science, I should say that it was in the direction of showing the universe to be a connected whole. The farther we advance in knowledge, the clearer it becomes that the bodies which are scattered through the celestial spaces are not completely independent existences, but have, with all their infinite diversity, many attributes in common.

In this we are going in the direction of certain ideas of the ancients which modern discovery long seemed to have contradicted. In the infancy of the race, the idea that the heavens were simply an enlarged and diversified earth, peopled by beings who could roam at pleasure from one extreme to the other, was a quite natural one. The crystalline sphere or spheres which contained all formed a combination of machinery revolving on a single plan. But all bonds of unity between the stars began to be weakened when Copernicus showed that there were no spheres, that the planets were isolated bodies, and that the stars were vastly more distant than the planets. As discovery went on and our conceptions of the universe were enlarged, it was found that the system of the fixed stars was made up of bodies so vastly distant and so completely isolated that it was difficult to conceive of them as standing in any definable relation to one another. It is true that they all emitted light, else we could not see them, and the theory of gravitation, if extended to such distances, a fact not then proved, showed that they acted on one another by their mutual gravitation. But this was all. Leaving out light and gravitation, the universe was still, in the time of Herschel, composed of bodies which, for the most part, could not stand in any known relation one to the other.

When, forty years ago, the spectroscope was applied to analyze the light coming from the stars, a field was opened not less fruitful than that which the telescope made known to Galileo. The first conclusion reached was that the sun was composed almost entirely of the same elements that existed upon the earth. Yet, as the bodies of our solar system were evidently closely related, this was not remarkable. But very soon the same conclusion was, to a limited extent, extended to the fixed stars in general. Such elements as iron, hydrogen, and calcium were found not to belong merely to our earth, but to form important constituents of the whole universe. We can conceive of no reason why, out of the infinite number of combinations which might make up a spectrum, there should not be a separate kind of matter for each combination. So far as we know, the elements might merge into one another by insensible gradations. It is, therefore, a remarkable and suggestive fact when we find that the elements which make up bodies so widely separate that we can hardly imagine them having anything in common, should be so much the same.

In recent times what we may regard as a new branch of astronomical science is being developed, showing a tendency towards unity of structure throughout the whole domain of the stars. This is what we now call the science of stellar statistics. The very conception of such a science might almost appall us by its immensity. The widest statistical field in other branches of research is that occupied by sociology. Every country has its census, in which the individual inhabitants are classified on the largest scale and the combination of these statistics for different countries may be said to include all the interest of the human race within its scope. Yet this field is necessarily confined to the surface of our planet. In the field of stellar statistics millions of stars are classified as if each taken individually were of no more weight in the scale than a single inhabitant of China in the scale of the sociologist. And yet the most insignificant of these suns may, for aught we know, have planets revolving around it, the interests of whose inhabitants cover as wide a range as ours do upon our own globe.