94 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



may have until after it is acquired, and the seeker after purely useful 

 knowledge will fail to acquire any real knowledge whatever. 



We have here the explanation of the well-known fact that the 

 functions of the investigator of the laws of nature, and of the inventor 

 who applies these laws to utilitarian purposes are rarely united in the 

 same person. If the one conspicuous exception which the past cen- 

 tury presents to this rule is not unique, we should probably have to 

 go back to Watt to find another. The true man of science of to-day 

 and of all past time has no such expression in his vocabulary as useful 

 knowledge. His domain is the whole of nature, and were he to 

 attempt its division into the useful and the useless, he would drop 

 from his high estate. 



It is, therefore, clear that the primary agent in the movement 

 which has elevated man to the masterful position he now occupies is 

 the scientific investigator. He it is whose work has deprived plague 

 and pestilence of their terrors, alleviated human suffering, girdled the 

 earth with the electric wire, bound the continent with the iron way, 

 and made neighbors of the most distant nations. As the first agent 

 which has made possible this meeting of his representatives, let his 

 evolution be this day our worthy theme. 



It has been said that the scientific investigator is a new species of 

 the human race. If this designation is applicable to a class defined 

 only by its functions, then it is eminently appropriate. But the biolo- 

 gist may object to it on the ground that a species, or even a variety, 

 is the product of heredity, and propagates only or mainly its own 

 kind. The evolutionist may join hands with him on the ground that 

 only new faculties, not new modes of activity, are to be regarded as 

 products of evolution, but let us not stop to dispute about words. We 

 have no need of the term ' species ' in our present course of thought ; 

 but to deny the term evolution to the genesis of previously non-existent 

 forms of intellectual activity is to narrow our conception of the course 

 of nature, and draw a line of demarkation where no tangible boundary 

 exists. 



I am the more ready to invite your attention to the evolution of 

 the scientific investigator, not only because the subject is closely corre- 

 lated with human evolution in general, but because it is one branch 

 of evolution which seems to me not to have received due prominence 

 in discussions of the subject. 



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There is an increasing recognition of methods of research and of 

 deduction which are common to large branches or to the whole of 

 science. We are more and more recognizing the principle that progress 

 in knowledge implies its reduction to a more exact form, and the ex- 

 pression of its ideas in language more or less mathematical. The 

 problem before the organizers of this congress was, therefore, to bring 

 the sciences together, and seek for the unity which we believe underlies 



