Celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary. Ixi 



ceedings before our race becomes, in the higher sense, a race 

 of sound thinkers. The little things must be reckoned as 

 little things, if we would measure intellectual values aright. 

 Those quantitative and composite studies that modern science 

 has taught us, have perhaps done more to point the way to 

 the essence of the best thinking than any other element in 

 our education. I believe that ultimately every one of the 

 subjects of thought must come under the dominion of the 

 methods now best represented in the pursuit of the physical 

 sciences. I believe that our sociological questions, our ethical 

 questions, all our humanistic problems must be solved by 

 inquiries pursued along these more rigorous and more 

 cautious lines. To illustrate, I think that the time umst 

 come when the operation of our laws will be as care- 

 fully studied, as accurately recorded, and as scrupulous- 

 ly followed out from beginning to end, as are the 

 experiments of the agricultural farm and of the biologi- 

 cal or physical laboratory to-day. When a people shall 

 agree to try an experiment in legislation, as an experiment, 

 and record the results of that experiment with the utmost 

 scrupulousness, and with untiring persistence and accuracy, 

 and shall be guided by the results in a true scientific spirit, 

 then we will be in the line of really higher legislation, a7id not 

 until then. So, likewise, I believe that our ethics, which are 

 the subject of so much solicitude to-day, are to be worked out 

 on the line of a careful, conscientious study of the whole course 

 of the prolonged administration of the world. You may spell it 

 Administration, as I would choose, or you may give it the form 

 of a common noun, but this will not affect the vital fact that 

 the secret of true ethics is to be found in a study of the actual 

 administration of the world as self -recorded in its own on- 

 goings. Ethical inductions are to be drawn from the great 

 chain of history which has led up to the present time. Our 

 duty to the race, and to all creation will be fulfilled chiefly by 

 the measure of influence we exert on the great chain of events 

 that is yet to follow. As a geologist, I forecast no short 

 period for the unfinished history of the earth. I fondly hope, 

 with no small measure of belief, that the period which remains 



