24 



In reading the words of the toast to which I am called upon 

 to respond, the thought suggests itself that the century which 

 ends to-night has, far more than earlier ages, seen these words 

 become true, and true in a somewhat different sense from that 

 which would perhaps most naturally have occurred to the 

 members of your Society in 1789. 



Then the symbols of the mathematician had indeed the 

 same meaning for the eyes of men in every country, but save 

 in this special field the stately and exact tongue of ancient 

 Eome had scarcely ceased to be recognized as the only univer- 

 sal language of science and philosophy, requiring every one to 

 come under its sway who would learn of his fellow-students or 

 would communicate to them what he had to offer of newly 

 discovered truth. 



Since then the symbolic formula of the chemist, the strati- 

 graphic section of the geologist, the microscopic photograph 

 of the biologist, have all been brought to sj^eak alike to every 

 one who jiursues the same line of investigation, and now the 

 ever-increasing activity of the printing press and the telegraph 

 tends more and more to render it a. matter of small moment 

 in which of the many forms of human speech a worker in 

 science may originally put forth what he has to say : in how 

 short a time will it be })laced in intelligible form before the 

 whole of the civilized world. The tapping of the armature 

 to which science has given an articulate voice, or the gentle 

 waving to and fro of the noiseless spot of light in a darkened 

 room, speaks forth in the languages of all nations, and with- 

 out irreverence may it be said that now " hear we in our own 

 tongue, wherein we were born, * * * the wonderful 

 works of God." 



Familiar as is nowadays the remark that within the last 

 century science has brought about the most marvelous exten- 



