THE DEBT OF THIS CENTURY TO LEARNED 



SOCIETIES. 



Address by Professor William H. Brewer, President of the Academy. 



In meeting together to rejoice over the completion of a hun- 

 dred years' work, it is fitting that we should consider what the 

 character of that work has been and what its relations are to the 

 century's progress. 



In the few minutes allotted me, anv detailed history of the 

 origin of learned societies will be impossible. I wish, therefore, 

 to speak more particularly of the role they have played during 

 the one hundred years of this Academy's existence, and I think 

 it will be found that, in this period, they have been, directly or 

 indirectly, a most potent factor of progress in material advance- 

 ment and in intellectual culture. Their influence has probably 

 been even greater than that of the universities, in that they have 

 dealt with adult men rather than with youth; for it is from men 

 in mature life that the impulse comes which demands and promotes 

 progress. 



When the Connecticut Academy was founded, the terms 

 " learned," " learned societies," and " intellectual culture," were 

 broad and comprehensive in theory, but in active use they were 

 curiously restricted. There were then but three " learned " pro- 

 fessions, — law, medicine, and theology. The universities recog- 

 nized a fourth comprehensive department, — philosophy. But 

 since that date, and chiefly during the last thirty or forty years, 

 the world has acknowledged many other professions as learned. 

 In my own college days, I can not remember of ever hearing the 

 term " professional " engineer, or " professional " chemist, except 

 as applied to the teachers of engineering or of chemistry in tech- 

 nical schools, colleges, or universities. I had never then heard 

 the term " professional engineer " applied to a person whose voca- 

 tion was that of planning or of carrying out engineering works, 

 nor to the chemist employed in the manufacture of commercial 

 products. 



