232 EVOLUTION OF THE scij:ntifio investigator. 



The assembling of such a body as now fills this hall was scarcely 

 possible in any 2)receding generation, and is made possible now only 

 through the agency of science itself. It differs from all preceding 

 international meetings by the universality of its scope, wliich aims 

 to include the whole of knowledge. It is also unique in that none 

 but leaders have been sought out as members. It is unique in that so 

 many lands have delegated their choicest intellects to carry on its 

 work. They come from the country to which our Republic is indebted 

 for a third of its territory, including the ground on which we stand; 

 from the land which has taught us that the most scholarly devotion 

 to the languages and learning of the cloistered past is compatible 

 with leadership in the practical application of modern science to the 

 arts of life; from the island whose language and literature have 

 found a new field and a vigorous growth in this region ; from the 

 last seat of the holy Roman Empire; from the country which, re- 

 membering a monarch who made an astronomical observation at the 

 Greenwich Observatory, has enthroned science in one of the highest 

 places in its government; from the peninsula so learned that we 

 have invited one of its scholars to come and tell us of our OAvn 

 language; from the land which gave birth to Leonardo, (lalileo, 

 Torricelli, Columbus, Volta — what an aii-ay or innnortal names! — 

 from the little republic of glorious history which, breeding men 

 rugged as its eternal snow peaks, has yet l)een the seat of scientitic 

 investigation since the day of the Bernoullis; from the land whose 

 iieroic dwellers did not hesitate to use the ocean itself to protect it 

 against invaders, and which now makes us marAcl at the amount of 

 erudition com])ressed within its littk' area; from the nation across 

 the Pacific, which by half a century of unequaled })rogress in the 

 arts of life has made an important contribution to evolutionary sci- 

 ence through demonstrating the falsity of the theory that the most 

 ancient races are doomed to be left \n the rear of the advancing age — 

 in a word, from every great center of intellectual activity on the 

 globe I see before me eminent representatives of that world adA'ance 

 in knowledge which we have met to celebi-ate. May we not confi- 

 dently hope that the discussions of such an assembhige will jn'ove 

 pregnant of a future for science which shall outshine even its bril- 

 liant past? 



(ientlemen and scholars all, you do not Ansit our shores to find 

 great collections in which centui'ies of humanity have given expres- 

 sion on canvas and in marbU' to their hopes, feai's, and asj)irati()ns. 

 Nor do you ex])ect institutions and buildings hoary with age. But 

 as you feel the vigoi' latent in the fr(>sh air of these expansive ])rai- 

 ries, which lias coUcctcd the pi'cxhicts of human genius by whicii we 

 are here surroinided. and. I may add, l)rought us together; as you 

 study the institutions whicth we Jiave founded for the benefit not only 



