rm--arising from its illustration; and guided by the principle hehad discovered, his wonderful mind, aided by his wonderful ten fingers, overran in a single autumn this vast domain, andhardly left behind him the shred of a fact to be gathered by his successors. And here the question may arise in some minds, What is the use of it all? The answer is, that if man's intellectual naturethirsts for knowledge, then knowledge is useful because it satisfies this thirst. If you demand practical ends, you must, Ithink, expand your definition of the term practical, and make it include all that elevates and enlightens the intellect, as wellas all that ministers to the bodily health and comfort of men. Still, if needed, an answer of another kind might be given tothe question 'What is its use?' As far as electricity has been applied for medical purposes, it has been almost exclusivelyFaraday's electricity. You have noticed those lines of wire which cross the streets of cities all over the world. It is Faraday's currents that speed from place to place through these wires. What has been the practical use of the labors of Faraday? But I would again emphatically say, that his work needs no such justification, and that if he had allowed his vision to be disturbed by considerations regarding the practical use of his discoveries, those discoveries would never have been made by him. 'I have rather,' he writes in 1831, 'been desirous of discovering new facts and new relations dependent on magneto-electric induction, than of exalting the force of those already obtained; being assured that the latter would find their full development hereafter.' ...
