PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES. 37 



edge systematically arranged, so as to display what we are pleased to 

 call the laws of nature, though more fittingly designated as the order 

 of nature. Science is a continuous study of antecedents and conse- 

 quences, causes and effects, interrogation and reply, action and reac- 

 tion, the source and outcome of every change. It is the intellect 

 applied to matter and energy. 



All through the ages man has been slowly acquiring the knowledge 

 that makes the warp and weft of science. Much of this has been 

 beaten into him by Dame Nature with her kindly but unchanging or- 

 der. "The soul that sinneth it shall die," "Hear and your soul shall 

 live," are truths that the eons have been teaching man. The seeming 

 harshness of the first is but one side of the shield; and while the 

 punishment that nature gives ignorance and foolishness is inexorable, 

 it is really but another manifestation of the constant faithfulness 

 which follows seed-time by harvest, and in so many ways gives fore- 

 thought a richer reward. When man first recognized an item in the 

 order of nature, science was born ; when he first utilized that knowl- 

 edge to ameliorate his condition, civilization was born. The growth 

 of both was extremely slow. Truth may be likened to a great sphere 

 of crystal which must be picked to pieces. As long as it presents its 

 smooth surface but little hold can be gained and progress made. One 

 must with great labor and slowly go down deeply at some point, or 

 excavate a trench from the sides of which rapid progress may be 

 made. So with science, the more we learn the more we can learn ; but 

 the beginnings of knowledge came with such painful slowness that 

 there can be no doubt that thousands of years were required to make 

 known what seem to us fortunate "heirs of all the ages" as very simple 

 things. The acceleration in the rate of acquisition of knowledge of 

 nature's order was slow, and it is safe to say that more was learned 

 during the last century than during all time before. 



Modern civilization is the product of science. It is the direct re- 

 sult of the partial discovery of the laws of nature that we have thus far 

 attained. The future of civilization is inseparably bound up with the 

 progress of science. As yet only the simpler relations of matter and 

 force are at all thoroughly understood, and in the more complex rela- 

 tions, involving life and the relations between living things, we have 

 scarcely made a beginning. I shall not take your time to enumerate 

 the stock illustrations of the progress of the nineteenth century ; the 

 newspapers do that for us, and it may be safely assumed that they are 

 familiar to all, though I believe that they are taken so much as a mat- 

 ter of course that the younger ones of us do not realize how tremen- 

 dous the change has been. I wish, however, to call your attention to 

 one or two phases of this growth of civilization. , 



