Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 July 1895 — Influence of Science. [ARTICLE]

Influence of Science.

The best that we gain from the pursuit of research, Prof. C. S. Minot writes, is our characteristic optimism. We are engaged in achieving results, and results of the most permanent and enduring quality. A business man may achieve a fortune, but time will dissi- , pate it. A statesman may be the savior of a nation, but bpw long do nations live? Knowledge has bo country,' belongs to no class, but is the might of mankind, and it Is mightier for what each of us has done. Yv e have brought our stones and they are built into the edifices and into its grandeur. My stone is a small one. It will certainly be forgotten that it is mine, nevertheless it will remain in place. How different is the pessimism toward which literary men are seen to tend! Ilarvasd University lost James Russell Lowell in 1891 and Asa Gray in 1888. The letters of both these eminent men have been published. Lowell's letters grow sad and discouraged, and he gives way more and more to the pessimistic spirit. Gray Is optimstic steadily to the end. The difference was partly due to natural tempera men.* but chiefly, I think, to the influence of their respective professions. Tho subject material of the literary man is familial; human nature and familiar nu-, man surroundings, and his task is 1 9 ■ express the thoughts and dreams which these suggest. He must compete with the whole past, with all the genius that has been. There is nothing new under the sun, he exclaims. But to us it is a contradicted by our daily experience.—Popular Science Monthly,