Celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary. liii 



That motive has always influenced men, and fortunately 

 will do so to the end of time. The scientist of the mid- 

 dle ages and of the Renaissance felt, like the Athenian 

 of old, the desire to see and to hear some new thing, and 

 to-day the same desire is with us. We, too, respond to 

 the call of the unknown; that great world of potential 

 knowledge which still " lieth in darkness " has an irre- 

 sistible attraction for us. But our work as scientists has a 

 deeper significance to the world than this gratification of our 

 desire toward the unknown. Science is no longer a mere 

 matter of curiosity. It is a matter of necessity, and the 

 work of the scientist is a part of the warp and woof of the 

 fabric of civilization. It is peculiarly the function of an 

 Academy like yours to make this truth evident to the com 

 munity which it serves. 



There are only two points to which I would refer in this 

 connection : First, the assurance of the future success and the 

 progress of civilization lies in the progress of science, of hu- 

 man knowledge. The complex adjustments of society to-day 

 come out of the knowledge which the past has accumulated. 

 The engineer is to-day applying the knowledge which pure 

 science has furnished to him. He is developing and exploit- 

 ing the regions which other explorers have discovered. He 

 is utilizing for the profit, for the advancement of mankind, 

 the results of research in the study and the laboratory. But 

 what is to be the history of the future? Shall the knowl- 

 edge of to day be worked out, and the skill of the engineer 

 degenerate into rule of thumb? Or are the scientists of to- 

 day engaged in fruitful research whose results the engineer 

 of tomorrow will employ? Nothing is more certain than 

 that the present must ever be accumulating the knowledge 

 out of which is to come the power of the future. History 

 teaches nothing more clearl}^ than that the great additions to 

 human power have come out of scientific di.-coveries, which 

 at first seemed far from any chance of influencing human 

 life, and that out of similar knowledge of to-day must 

 come the conditions of life in the future. Science gives us a 

 brilliant example of a series of discoveries that has just now 



