38 RECORDS 



or at least a permanence and a continuity compared with which 

 all human affairs appear ephemeral and fleeting, measurement 

 and calculation tend to raise man above the level of his environ- 

 ment. They bid him look forward as well as backward, and 

 they assure him that in a larger study of the universe lies 

 boundless opportunity for his improvement. 



But while that sort of knowledge which has been reduced 

 to quantitative expression has done more, probably, than all 

 else to disclose man's place in and his relations to the rest of 

 the universe, it would appear that mankind makes relatively 

 little use of this knowledge and that we are not yet ready, as a 

 race, to replace the indefinite by the definite even wherein such 

 substitution is clearly practicable. It is a curious and a puz- 

 zling, though perfectly obvious, fact that mankind as a whole 

 lives less in the thought of the present than in the thought of 

 the past, and that as a race we have far more respect for the 

 myths of antiquity than we have for the certainties of exact 

 science. Our ships, for example, are navigated with great suc- 

 cess by aid of the sextant, the chronometer, and the nautical 

 almanac ; but what company would dare set Friday as the day 

 for beginning the transatlantic voyage of a passenger steamer ? 

 From time immemorial tradition has dominated reason in the 

 masses of men. Each age has lived, not in the full possession 

 of the best thought available to it, but, rather, under the sway 

 of the thought of some preceding age. We are assured even 

 now, by some eminent minds, that the highest sources of light 

 for us are nearly all found in the distant past ; and a few go so 

 far as to assert that modern science is merely furbishing up the 

 half-lost learning of ages long gone by. 



The work of academies and other scientific organizations is 

 therefore nowhere near completion. Great strides toward intel- 

 lectual emancipation have been made during recent times, but 

 they have served only to enlarge the field for, and to increase 

 the need of, that sort of knowledge which is permanent and 

 verifiable. Measurement and calculation have furnished an 

 invaluable fund of such knowledge during the two centuries 

 just past, and we have every reason to anticipate that they will 



