Arizona republican., 1897-11-16

See did mot deliver an astronomical lectuhe, but rather dealt with the beauty and necessity of all the sciences. both pure and applied, in this and all other ages, past, present and future. He paid a glowing tribute to the in worlds s fate by those intel.ec qlal giants of the ancients, Homer, Plato and Aristotle. He secuted the idea, unfortunately becoming too prevalent, teachings of the amcients. He was particularly severe on the undue prom insnce given ito merely material things in this country. He doubted that our myrfa5s of electric wires and our scores of stately and superb bridges added one unit to the sum total of human happiness. Those things in the long run were but flimsy nothings to be swept away by the breath of decay. But he proclaimed in mo uncertain tonlas. that the songs of Homer, the ethics of Aristotle, and researches of Laplace were things of the mind, yea, of the soul, and should live till time would be TO more.
 He did not allow amy false patriot ism to prevent him from making un- favorable comparisons of the condi- tion of the advancement of the sciences in the United States with that in Europe, both among the peo- pile at large amd in educational circI-s. He mildly, but expressiuely, suggested that Edison was mot quite the equal of Lord Kelvin, and that we had no HelmhoMZs or Pasteurs at all. He de- plored the ,eMistance of such a state of facts, but thought the fault lay pri- marily with the fh-ame.s of our gov, ernment who failed to provide for a minister or secretary of education and of tihe deplorable tenf;ncy of t[ha American people to build up an aris- t,ocracy of wlsaIth rather than an a-- istooracy of intellect. He even thought that the perpetuation of an arfstocracy such as exists in England and Germany would be batter than our present almost calamitous condition. He said that while he had not a word to say against the millionaire class. fer it coutainal ve-y many worthy men, for instance MT Lowell, he re- garded the prominence of such men as Jay Gould and the method pursued by the homogeneous of our great univel-aSi~ies, in choosing presidents for those institutions because of sub erviency Ito the momsy power, and for so-called business ability, instead of brains and learning ito be a matter of the gravest moment to our continued existence as a nation, and he vas ln- clined to believe that if such course was continued unchecked it would be- come the motive power of a disinte- grating force whose momentum no human agency could aTlreSt; and that tlhis great ma ion would sink, as Rome samk, bem:ath the load of too much love of mereiy material things. But all was not desert, however, in Amer ican scientific fields. He mentioned the names of BOMditch, Peirce and Benjamin A. Gould as bright partic ular Oasssi He advised the teaching of hard rather than easy studies in our schools; that such lead to the draining of the mind, and that every one should work, and work hard, to achieve knowledge, for there is no royal road to learning.
 The lecture occupied oWar two hours, and was replete with evidences of the cultulred and profound mind of the lecturer. The only criticisms which could be applied were, perhaps, a slightly faulty delivery and a tendency to shoot over the heads of his audi ende.