170 ANNUAL EEPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918. 



listen a little while ago to a series of lectures by our honored ex- 

 President, Mr. Taft, on " The Executive Power," and he said in those 

 lectures that his friend, Mr. Roosevelt, had somewhere classified the 

 Presidents of the United States into two groups — the first, the group 

 that had interpreted the executive power broadly and exercised it 

 largely, and the second, the group that had interpreted it narrowly 

 and exercised it sparingly, and, said Mr. Taft, " Mr. Roosevelt began 

 the first group with Lincoln and closed it with himself, and he began 

 the second group with Buchanan and closed it with myself." Then, 

 with his inimitable chuckle, Mr. Taft said, " That reminds me of a 

 story about a little boy who came home from school and said, ' Papa, 

 did you know I was the brightest student in the class? ' His father 

 replied, ' No, I didn't know it. When did the teacher tell you so ? ' 

 The boy answered, ' The teacher didn't tell me so at all, I just noticed 

 it myself.' " 



If I appear at all, in what I say, to have just noticed it myself, I beg 

 of you at any rate to believe me that the appreciation is an apprecia- 

 tion of the subject, of the method which it uses, of the spirit which 

 underlies it, and of the results which have actually flowed from it, 

 and not an appreciation of any individual or group of individuals. 



The spirit of modern science is something relatively new in the 

 world's history, and I want, as an introduction to the main address, 

 to give an analysis of what it is. I want to take you up in an 

 airplane which flies in time rather than in space, and to look down 

 with you upon the high peaks which distinguish the centuries, and 

 let you and me see together what is the distinguishing character- 

 istics of this century in which we live. I think there will be no 

 question at all, if you get far enough out of it so that you can see 

 the woods without having your vision clouded by the proximity of 

 the trees, that the thing which is characteristic of our modern civil- 

 ization is the spirit of scientific research — a spirit which first grew 

 up in the subject of physics and has spread from it to all the 

 other subjects of modern scientific inquiry. 



That spirit has three elements. The first is a philosophy, the 

 second is a method, and the. third is a faith. Look first at the 

 philosophy. I say that is new for the reason that all primitive 

 peoples, and many that are not primitive, have held a philosophy 

 that is both animistic and fatalistic. Every phenomenon which is 

 at all unusual, or for any reason not immediately intelligible, used 

 to be attributed to the direct action of some invisible personal 

 being. Witness the peopling of the woods and streams with spirits 

 by the Greeks, the miracles and possession by demons of the Jews, 

 the witchcraft manias of our own Puritan forefathers, only two or 

 three hundred years ago. 



