There is a Hall of Fame not built by the hand of man. It is the memory of mankind. In many of its galleries this man's bust could with justice be placed. Diplomacy would claim him as of her greatest. For him would be the laurel of administrative wisdom. Among statesmen he would be welcomed; and who of the masters of English prose shall in that hall of fame be more secure of grateful remembrance, and who more certain of a place among men of science.
As an investigator of nature and of nature's laws he is materially represented here by right of eminent achievement. Let us as men of science feel proud that Franklin's fame as a philosopher did much to win for Franklin the diplomatist such useful consideration and respect as led to final success.
Many of those you honor to-day had moral and temperamental peculiarities which more or less influenced their lives and are common to men of science. Most of them cared little about making money; still less about keeping it. Franklin, on the contrary, dreaded poverty; was careful in business, made fruitful investments and died rich; nevertheless, like the typical man of science, he refused to make money out of his discoveries, or by patents to protect his inventions. In him the man of science, unselfish, free from money greed, seemed to exist apart from all those other men who went to the making of the manyminded Franklin. In another way he was singularly unlike such typical men of science as Henry, in physics, and Leidy, in natural history. When Franklin made a discovery his next thought was as to what practical use it could be put. If he made some novel observation of nature, he asked himself at once how he could make it serve his fellow men. The great reapers of the harvest of truth commonly leave the inventor to make practical use of their unregarded thought.
Leaving the wide land to do justice to Franklin, the model citizen and great diplomatist, here we crown him with the assured verdict of posterity Franklin, the man of pure science. Here we welcome him to this goodly fellowship of those who communed with nature and read the secrets of the Almighty Maker.
Alexander von Humboldt
By Baron SPECK VON STERNBURG
GERMAN EMBASSY, WASHINGTON, D. C.
In this immortal man, whose bust you have gathered to unveil, the world reveres its greatest master since the days of Aristotle. His genius covered all that man ever thought, did and observed in nature. There is no branch of human knowledge into which his mind did not
