before it had become old, and Fresnel died,
leaving, however, behind him a name immortal in the annals of science.

One word more I should like to say regarding Fresnel. There are things
better even than science. Character is higher than Intellect, but it
is especially pleasant to those who wish to think well of human nature
when high intellect and upright character are found combined. They
were combined in this young Frenchman. In those hot conflicts of the
undulatory theory, he stood forth as a man of integrity, claiming no
more than his right, and ready to concede their rights to others. He
at once recognized and acknowledged the merits of Thomas Young.
Indeed, it was he, and his fellow-countryman Arago, who first startled
England into the consciousness of the injustice done to Young in the
'Edinburgh Review.'

I should like to read to you a brief extract from a letter written by
Fresnel to Young in 1824, as it throws a pleasant light upon the
character of the French philosopher. 'For a long time,' says Fresnel,
'that sensibility, or that vanity, which people call love of glory has
been much blunted in me. I labour much less to catch the suffrages of
the public, than to obtain that inward approval which has always been
the sweetest reward of my efforts. Without doubt, in moments of
disgust and discouragement, I have often needed the spur of vanity to
excite me to pursue my researches. But all the compliments I have
received from Arago, De la Place, and Biot never gave me so much
pleasure as the discovery of a theoretic truth or the confirmation of
a calculation by experiment.'

* * * * *

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 th