42 KANSAS ACADEMY OP SCIENCE. 



prising to one who has not been in position to note its progress from 

 week to week, and there can be no doubt that we are on the verge of 

 great advances in that field. We may easily believe that medicine 

 will become a science, instead of a series of experiments with drugs of 

 which we know little upon organisms of which we know less. There 

 are those who even dare to hope that death itself will be conquered 

 by the fuller knowledge of cell processes that the future will reveal. 

 Agriculture, with its twin lines of effort, plant production and animal 

 production, involving, as they do, a more complicated play of natural 

 forces than is displayed in any other industry, will become less un- 

 certain as controllable factors become better understood. Domestic 

 economy may become a science. 



I believe that the greatest field for the progress of the future is 

 that which includes consciousness and mentality as factors in the phe- 

 nomena. I yield to none in admiration for the courage and the genius 

 of the scientists of the past, but it seems to me that there has been by 

 most scientists a tendency to ignore certain classes of phenomena, or to 

 regard them as fraudulent and not even worthy of exposure. While 

 scientists have assailed the conservatism of the theology of the past, 

 they are not themselves free from the conservative spirit that perme- 

 ates humanity, and, indeed, is in many ways the safeguard of humanity. 

 The tendency of the study of science is toward materialism, and is it 

 not true that this tendency has attained too great force in the past, 

 and led many of us to neglect or discredit phenomena that appeared 

 to be outside the realm of chemistry and physics ? If I mistake not, 

 it is within the memory of most of us that the attitude of science to- 

 wards mesmerism, as it was then called, was one of incredulity and of 

 pity for the deluded victims, mingled with a pharisaical self-satisfac- 

 tion in the fact that we were not like them. But we have lived to see 

 what was discredited as mesmerism become respectable as hypnotism, 

 and a real remedial agent, the power of which may extend even to the 

 production of complete anesthesia. We have lived to see a powerful 

 organization built up, which has been characterized as neither Chris- 

 tian nor scientific, while claiming to be both, the binding force of 

 which lies in the subtle but intimate connection between body and 

 mind. Some of us will live to see great advances in the study of the 

 mind as related to the body. Even crude observation shows that 

 there is some connection between mental states and physiological 

 processes, and a bold and open acceptance of this as a field for legiti- 

 mate investigation will probably yield rich returns. I may add that 

 I do not believe that these returns will be obtained either by those 

 who deny the existence of matter or those who believe in nothing 

 else. 



