Jii Trans. Acad. Set. of JSt. Louis. 



eyes did see my substance yet being unperfect, and in thy 

 book all my members were written, what days they should be 

 fashioned, when as yet there were none of them." Thus in 

 the half century that has passed since the founding of your 

 Academy the engineer has come to his own. Through him 

 science has become a leader in the advancement of human 

 society, the dominating force in civilization, and her works in 

 the world of to-day are the highest expression of human 

 power. 



But the other part of your motto is that of which I would 

 speak with more affection, if not with greater emphasis. 

 Your infant Academy was dedicated, first to human knowl- 

 edge, and then to human power. Not all men could recognize 

 in the science of fifty years ago that supreme position in 

 human thought which the half century has assigned to it. 

 There were then few men whose work was wholly devoted to 

 science, and their work was not held in the highest esteem by 

 all of the community. Science was hardly a vocation ; hardly 

 the business of a man's life. It was something interesting : 

 something for men to play with ; something to which the 

 teacher might give his leisure hours in the laboratory ; some- 

 thing to which the busy physician, like Dr. Engelmann, could 

 turn in moments snatched from his profession. But, on the 

 whole, the world of the '50's felt that the study of science 

 was quite apart from man's real life. It lay outside of the 

 serious business of the world. To-day the world sees in the 

 achievements of applied science at once the indispensable 

 conditions of our complex civilization and the highest expres- 

 sion of human power. In like manner, though less clearly, 

 it is beginning to see in the results of pure science, of re- 

 search, the highest expression of human knowledge and the 

 necessary conditions of human progress. 



Men devoted to research, in some sense of the term, have 

 been with mankind from the beginning. Their work is on 

 one side an expression of one of the most ancient and funda- 

 mental impulses of the race. 



•' For to admire aud for to see 

 For to behold this world so wide " — 



