45 



the imperishable worth of hiunan science? Empires have 

 risen and fallen in the Old World; the thirteen colonies have 

 become the United States; the United States, surviving the 

 shock of a civil war, have expanded over the continent ; but 

 this Society meanwhile has pursued its peaceful mission of ac- 

 cumulating and diffusing knowledge, unchanged amid surround- 

 ing changes. 



What wonderful stores of knowledge it has gathered into 

 its garners daring these past hundred years ! The heavens, 

 the very heaven of heavens, have been unveiled and the birth 

 and growth of worlds exposed to our view. The earth in all 

 its past history has been retraced, and its extinct dynasties of 

 life recalled as in a marvelous resurrection. Man has been 

 placed at the summit of living nature with his evolving races, 

 languages and arts. The foul itself, turning its powers in scru- 

 tiny upon itself, has been tracing the logical laws and pro- 

 cesses by which it has accumulated this immense store of 

 knowledge. Society, in the ranks of its humblest toilers, as 

 well as in these higher circles of the learned, has begun to 

 offer problems of which our wisest statecraft has not dreamed, 

 and for the moral and religious solution of which the Protest- 

 ant members of this philosophical association will welcome 

 the aid of their Roman Catholic fellow- members, of whom I 

 am glad to find we have a distinguished representative here to- 

 night. Even theology is becoming the study of scientists as 

 well as divines. And philosophy is collecting from all the 

 sciences the materials for a complete system of knowledge. 



What illustrious names have been enrolled in the transac- 

 tions of this Society during the century passed ! The choicest 

 and brightest intellects of all lands have been- gathered from 

 all the sciences and crowned with your laurel as kings in the 

 realm of knowledge and benefactors of mankind. Permit me, 



