Matthew Fontaine Maury

“ There are minds whose exuberant fancy leads them off from the paths of science into the regions of fable and romance; there they build their airy castles, and lighting them up with the brilliancy of their imaginations, they revel on with fairy queens or goblins bold. There is a reality in store for the youth of such a mind. ”

“ But limited though they be, where is the country to which these discoveries do not extend, or what, the mind not utterly barren and opake that they have not enlightened and improved?
They are heard on the sea, they are seen on the land; and though not so obvious, their impress is as palpable upon the schools. They work in a circle. In the schools they begin, to the schools they return. Improvements in education gave rise to the spirit of research, of discovery, and invention, which now pervades the world. Action and re-action are reciprocals. ”

“ We were not content to snatch the lightning from the clouds, and to turn the thunder-bolt aside from its mark; for in the act electricity was discovered to be an important agent of nature. Finding that man might rule the lightning, the utilitarian sought to use it; as knowledge with regard to it has increased, its uses have been extended, until ingenuity has contrived to fashion it into wings for thought, and then to charge it with the instant delivery of messages as far asunder as the poles. ”

“ The youth here have had not only all the advantages of education which we had in our day, but they have had the benefits also of all the new lights, the discoveries and improvement that have since been made. They are the greybeards, we the striplings.
As knowledge increases, our views are enlarged, our wants multiplied, and our social condition improved; under the pressure of newly constituted wants, there has gone forth from the schools a spirit of philosophical research which gives new strength to the human mind, and imparts to the ingenuity of man energies whose compass cannot be measured. ”

“ The business of life, the world and its ways, are to them like an unknown island to the mariner in the midst of the ocean—beautiful in the distance, rich with verdure and enchanting to the imagination, but surrounded with shoals he knows not where, and peopled with inhabitants he knows not whom. ”

“ Almost daily we hear of some new thing, of some triumph of mind over matter, which those who witness it are ready to pronounce the ne plus ultra of human ingenuity. But to-morrow, the ever busy mind of man, acting under the impulse of an age eminently utilitarian, pushes on with its discoveries, and finds more room for improvement: the powers of ingenuity are again taxed with a new idea, and the next day brings forth a plus ultra. ”

“ In infinite wisdom they are so balanced, that there is never an insect too much on one side, nor a green leaf too little on the other. Arrived at this point, the student of science turns from the book of nature to the volume of inspiration, and under the lights of these profitable studies, finds new beauties in the assurance that a “sparrow falls not to the ground without knowledge.” ”

“ Following up the idea thus expressed by nature, men of science, operating with the same agents, have produced such revolutions in the moral world, have so enlarged the boundaries of knowledge, and that, too, at a rate so rapid, and in a time so short, that if the sages of but one generation ago could be brought back to life among us, they would find themselves at fault in a thousand ways. Discoveries and inventions, founded on principles of which the wisest of them were ignorant, would meet them at every turn. ”

“ He who reads by such lights and doubts, is no philosopher, but the drivelling companion of the undevout astronomer. When I see a youth enter college, having in him the true spirit of mathematical investigation and philosophical research, I mark him for a useful man, and a noble example in his generation. ”

“ It is a discovery of modern science that the atmosphere in one point of view is a sort of laboratory for receiving dead organic matter, and that the plants and trees are condensing machines for preparing it again for animal use. All breathing creatures, with every respiration, cast out into the air a quantity of matter that has coursed their veins, and exhausted its force in giving vitality to their systems. ”

“ Taking one year with another, the amount of vegetable productions is just sufficient for the sustenance of the animals. Supply and demand are in as rigid proportions here as elsewhere. Nature is no doubt as admirably endowed with the regulating principles for the conservation of quantities, as we know she is with those for the conservation of areas. If from the combustion of coal, and the consumption of food, there be a greater quantity of gases evolved and discharged into the air, there is on the other hand an increased vegetable production sufficient to absorb and condense it. ”

“ When the trees and plants flourished which produced this coal, the components of the atmosphere were very different from what they now are, for the carbon of this coal was abstracted from the air, Why, then, it may be asked, seeing the quantities of coal that are now consumed, returning its carbon back into the atmosphere, does not the air become tainted, and again unfit for animals constituted as we are? Reasoning by analogy, the answer is plain. Are not the vegetable productions of the earth, and the population of the world, greater now, than they probably have ever been? ”

“ It has often been remarked, that the most sublime moral spectacle which the world affords, is an honest man struggling with adversity. But to me, the most beautiful is that which we here have before us—a band of generous youth, full of gay dreams, and bright hopes, just ready to launch out upon the world ”

“ Beauties far more lovely, poetry far more sublime, lessons inexpressibly more eloquent and instructive than any which the classic lore of ancient Greece or Rome ever afforded, are now to be seen and gathered in the walks of science. Physics have ceased to be considered a dry study; they are called beautiful. The discoveries of modern science have realized the wildest imaginings of the poet ”

“ There are certain nodding flowers of the field which give an instructive lesson upon the subject of cosmical arrangements, and show how beautiful are the views which open out before the student of nature, as patiently he turns over leaf after leaf of her exquisite works. ”

“ Hence we infer that, on the morning of creation, the future well-being even of the little snow-drop, whose appearance by our garden walks in early spring we hail with so much delight, was considered—that when it was made, the magnitude and dimensions of the whole earth, from the equator to the poles, from centre to circumference, were taken into the account and weighed with it; and that exactly that degree of strength was given to its fibres which is best suited to its vegetable health. ”

“ Nature has recorded the fact on tablets of the rock, and left evidences of it in the coal fields and other remains which are scattered through the earth. The light and heat from the anthracite fire, which cheers and warms us in a winter’s day. came from the sun ages and ages ago, and have been bottled away, as it were, in the earth for man’s use, and the present economy of nature and the world. The coal measures of the earth cover many thousand square miles; they, too, are filled by the work of the yellow ray; for it is well known that coal is of vegetable origin. It is almost all carbon. ”

“ Yet notwithstanding the extent of the operation, the ages that it has been going on, the two parts—the animal which corrupts, and the vegetable which purifies—are so beautifully adjusted and arranged, so wonderfully compensated and balanced, that the nicest analysis can detect in the atmosphere not the slightest change as to its components or their relative proportions. From such views we are led to the conclusion that the animal arid vegetable parts of creation are in exact counterpoise. ”

“ Dreading nothing so much as the snares which may be laid for him in treachery or deceit, he goes armed; but his arms are only for defence. Firm of purpose, unjust to none, true to himself, he is resolved to follow the line of his duty. If difficulty and danger beset in such a path, he faulters not, but meets them with a will. ”

“ Under the pressure of an age eminently utilitarian as this is, he will learn at last, when perhaps the spring time of life is past and gone, and it is too late for the lesson; but sooner or later he will learn the truth, that “where fairies have danced their mystic ring, though flowers may blow, fruit will hardly come.” ”

“ When they have been duly impregnated with the seed-bearing principle, their vegetable health requires them again to lift their heads and stand erect. Now, it is as easy to show, that if the earth had been greater or smaller, the stalk of this flower stronger or weaker, it could not bow its head at the right time, fecundation could not take place, the plant never could have borne seed after its kind, and its species would have become extinct with the first individual planted by its maker. ”

“ If, therefore, such care was had for only one flower of the field, how much more in the whole system of terrestrial adaptations, between the air and its gases, the land and water, the animal and the vegetable, must care have been taken for the well-being and preservation of all things; and above all for man, for whose use all things were made.
Arrived at this point, our favorite studies lead directly from nature up to nature’s God; and the youth, with his mind thus directed, finds only a greater force in the emphasis of the prophet, “ Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand ”

“ Every moment millions and millions of pounds of this exhausted matter are cast into the air. From the lungs and organs of respiration of each one of you here present, there are thrown off nearly 1000 lbs. per annum of what to each has been flesh and blood. Imagine, then, the quantity from the whole animal kingdom, including every living creature, from the smallest inject up to lordly man ”

“ And that machine must be a powerful condenser indeed, which can compress invisible gases into tangible substances, and present them to our senses in the shape of the hardest wood and the tallest trees that are grown in the forest. ”