CONGRESS OF ARTS AND SCIENCE. 467 



increasing in a geometric ratio. To take a single instance; the Astro- 

 nomische Nachrichtehj established about 1825, now the oldest and 

 most reputable astronomical journal of the world, began by supply- 

 ing practically all the mvds of astronomers for a medium of communi- 

 cation, by issuing perhaps one volume in a year. With every decade 

 the number of volumes went on increasing until, in recent years, three 

 or four volumes have been issued annually, and the one hundred and 

 seventieth volume is soon to appear. But this is not all. Even 

 with this continually increasing number, the publication has fallen 

 short of the requirements of astronomical investigators, so that fresh 

 media of communication have from time to time been opened. New 

 scientific societies including astronomy, and new astronomical societies, 

 are from time to time founded. The American Astronomical Journal 

 founded by Dr. Gould in 1849, and revived in 1885, takes the place 

 of the Astronomische Nachrichten in this country. The Monthly 

 Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society have continually grown 

 until the annual volume has become of alarming thickness. New 

 astronomical societies add to the mass, and as if these were not suffi- 

 cient, several great observatories have commenced series of their own. 

 The result is that an astronomer can hardly know more than a small 

 fraction of what is being done in his own field, and, if an attempt were 

 made to subdivide this science into its minutest specialties, one would 

 hardly know where to stop. 



What is true of astronomy is true not only of all the older sciences, 

 but of the new ones, which are from time to time being opened up, 

 and of the various specialties into which every branch of science is 

 divided. Dictionaries can not keep pace with the new -ologies, 

 -ographies and -onomies, — and he is a scholar indeed who, on hearing 

 the name of any science, could on the moment accurately define its 

 field. Depressing indeed would be the prospect if scientific investi- 

 gators could look forward only to an unending increase of this process 

 of subdivision. When the number of serials becomes so great that a 

 mere catalogue of them makes a book, as is now the case, and when 

 the volumes of a serial mount up into the thousands, as they must before 

 many generations pass, who shall be able to know what is contained 

 in them? Most happily, we can see the possibility of an opposite 

 process — the addition of integration to the indefinite differentiation 

 with which we are so familiar. As we go deeper into all the laws of 

 nature, Ave are led nearer and nearer to the belief that the funda- 

 mental principles on which her operations are carried on may be few 

 in number, and that what seems to us a great diversity of laws may 

 consist in the action of one and the same law under a variety of dif- 

 ferent conditions. It is true that the process of reducing all natural 

 operations, even those of inanimate nature, to their first principles, is 



