36 Boston Society of Natural History 



of winning for man new powers over the gravest natural evils really 

 lies. This Society has a part in making that pregnant record. 



There is another aspect of your work which seems to me very 

 important. You propose to maintain for the public an exhibition 

 of all forms of vegetable and animal life in their wondrous and end- 

 less variety. Hither people may come and see their fellow-beings 

 in the widest and truest sense. Moralists tell us that the best de- 

 velopment of an individual man is not to be reached through in- 

 trospection, self-reference, and an overweening anxiety about his 

 own salvation. They say to every man, "look out and not in." The 

 same exhortation might well be addressed to the human race. Man- 

 kind needs to look out, and not in ; to realize that it is but one, 

 though a noble one, among countless races and tribes of creatures 

 which inhabit or have inhabited this atom of earth, and that its 

 welfare is not the sole end of creation or the one absorbing inter- 

 est of the Creator. A few years ago all men believed that the whole 

 boundless universe centered upon man. That delusion has lost its 

 hold, except perhaps within the well-protected domain of dogmatic 

 theology. But there are still many people who cling to the kindred 

 conceit that this earth, at least, was made for man. It is a belief 

 which will not survive much acquaintance with the vast solitudes 

 of the earth which teem with other life than man's — the everglades, 

 the jungles, the mountains, and seas. It is a belief which a thought- 

 ful man or child will be apt to qualify or resign, as he studiously 

 examines such a collection of Natural History as this Society strives 

 to maintain. 



ADDRESS OF DOCTOR ALEXANDER AGASSIZ 



The scientific man should be without nationality, ready to welcome 

 progress from any quarter. Science is bound neither by country 



