146 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS 



The assembling of such a body as now fills this hall was scarcely 

 possible in any preceding generation, and is made possible now only 

 through the agency of science itself. It differs from all preceding inter- 

 national meetings by the universality of its scope, which aims to 

 include the whole of knowledge. It is also unique in that none but 

 leaders have been sought out as members. It is unique in that so 

 many lands have delegated their choicest intellects to carry on its 

 work. They come from the country to which our republic is indebted 

 for a third of its territory, including the ground on which we stand; 

 from the land which has taught us that the most scholarly devotion to 

 the languages and learning of the cloistered past is compatible with 

 leadership in the practical application of modern science to the arts 

 of life; from the island whose language and literature have found 

 a new field and a vigorous growth in this region; from the last seat 

 of the holy Roman Empire; from the country which, remembering 

 a monarch who made an astronomical observation at the Greenwich 

 Observatory, has enthroned science in one of the highest places in its 

 government; from the peninsula so learned that we have invited one 

 of its scholars to come and tell us of our own language; from the land 

 which gave birth to Leonardo, Galileo, Torricelli, Columbus, Volta 

 what an array of immortal names ! from the little republic of 

 glorious history which, breeding men rugged as its eternal snow- 

 peaks, has yet been the seat of scientific investigation since the day of 

 the Bernoullis; from the land whose heroic dwellers did not hesitate 

 to use the ocean itself to protect it against invaders, and which now 

 makes us marvel at the amount of erudition compressed within its 

 little area; from the nation across the Pacific, which, by half a cen- 

 tury of unequaled progress in the arts of life, has made an important 

 contribution to evolutionary science through demonstrating the 

 falsity of the theory that the most ancient races are doomed to be 

 left in the rear of the advancing age in a word, from every great 

 centre of intellectual activity on the globe I see before me eminent 

 representatives of that world-advance in knowledge which we have 

 met to celebrate. May we not confidently hope that the discussions 

 of such an assemblage will prove pregnant of a future for science 

 which shall outshine even its brilliant past? 



Gentlemen and scholars all'! You do not visit our shores to find 

 great collections in which centuries of humanity have given expression 

 on canvas and in marble to their hopes, fears, and aspirations. Nor 

 do you expect institutions and buildings hoary with age. But as you 

 feel the vigor latent in tlie fresh air of these expansive prairies, which 

 has collected the products of human genius by which we are here 

 surrounded, and, I may add, brought us together; as you study the 

 institutions which we have founded for the benefit, not only of our 

 own people, but of humanity at large; as you meet the men who, in 



