Ix Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis. 



gether of currents of different kinds often gives rise to the 

 concentration of metallic values. I think something like this 

 is true in the scientific world. The Academy is a means by 

 which interests of diverse kinds arising from varied sources, 

 can be brought together, and through intermingling, develop 

 intellectual values that might otherwise be lost. In the theory 

 of ore deposits, the current which brings in no metallic con- 

 tent, is perhaps as essential as the one that is burdened with 

 riches, and in like manner a membership that seeks knowl- 

 edge may be as important to the welfare of an Academy as 

 one which has knowledge to give. 



Our President has referred to the hope of long life for the 

 Academy. This hope might well have taken the form of an 

 expression of confidence that an Academy, or the lineal 

 descendant of an Academy in such form as the needs of the 

 future may require, is to be a perpetual institution — per- 

 petual at least, so long as man shall be progressive. I do 

 not think we fully realize the importance of the work 

 done by an institution of this kind as a source of intel- 

 lectual evolution. I feel that as a race, we are just be- 

 ginning to learn how to think; that we are in the very 

 earliest stages of intellectual development of the higher order. 

 The sounder modes of thought are, in my judgment, just 

 coming into general use. They are being introduced more 

 largely through the natural and physical sciences than 

 through other lines of intellectual endeavor, because in deal- 

 ing with the tangible things of these sciences, we are forced 

 to recognize the rigor of facts, the complexity of phenomena, 

 and the necessity for distinguishing that which is important 

 from that which is trivial. These are the essential factors of 

 common sense. In many of the older academic studies, the 

 trivial rather than the important has been emphasized. It 

 has been the nice shadings that are subtle, rather than the 

 weighty things that are basal, that have claimed attention. 

 The dative case has occupied more thought than the indis- 

 pensible cases. It is the discrimination of the fundamental 

 things, it is the laying of weight on the really important 

 things that must become dominant in our intellectual pro- 



