S4: Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



Between these two limits all knowledge is forever moving. 

 It can never rest. The tide of thought sweeps onward to- 

 wards the infinite — God following it to its final absorption into 

 the I Am, simple being, — while finite man, because of his 

 finiteness, can only reach those universals which are infinite 

 only to human thought. Like men on a journey we leave the 

 train when we have reached our journey's end, but the train 

 passes on out of sight in the distance, sending back, now and 

 then, tokens of its progress, as it thunders over a bridge, or 

 whistles shrill as it nears some further stopping place, until at 

 last all is still, not because the train has stopped, but because 

 we can follow it no further with our senses. Even after sci- 

 ence has reached the utmost limit possible to it, it is not satis- 

 fied to rest there, but starts at once upon its return trip, to 

 bring to notice undiscovered facts hidden in these mighty 

 generalizations. Thus the pendulum of intellectual activity 

 unceasingly vibrates between the infinite and the finite, never 

 resting, because Idea and Matter, the force of Man and the force 

 of Nature can never be completely identified. 



