172 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN" INSTITUTION. 1918. 



method, and have been controlled simply by prejudice and by pre- 

 conception. This is no reflection on the scientific method ; it merely 

 means that these men have not been able to carry over the methods 

 they use in their science into all the departments of their thinking. 

 The world has been controlled by prejudice and emotionalism so long 

 that reversions still occur, but the fact that these reversions occur 

 after all does not discredit the scientist, nor make him disbelieve in 

 his method. Why? Simply because that method has worked, it is 

 working to-da} r , and its promise of working to-morrow is larger 

 than it has ever been before in the world's history. 



Do you realize that within the lifetime of men now living, within a 

 hundred years, or 130 years at most, all the external conditions under 

 which man lives his life on this earth have been more completely 

 revolutionized than during all the ages of recorded history which 

 preceded? My great-grandfather lived essentially the same kind of 

 a life, so far as external conditions were concerned, as did his Assy- 

 rian prototype 6,000 years ago. He went as far as his own legs or the 

 legs of his horse could carry him. He dug his ditch, he mowed his 

 hay, he did all the operations of his industrial life, with the power 

 of his own two arms, or the power of his wife's two arms, with an oc- 

 casional lift from his horse or his ox. He carried a dried potato in 

 his pocket to keep off rheumatism, and he worshipped his God in 

 almost the same superstitious way. It w r as only in the beginning of 

 the nineteenth century that the great discovery of the ages began to 

 be borne in upon the consciousness of mankind through the work of a 

 few patient, indefatigable men who had caught the spirit which 

 Galileo perhaps first notably embodied, and passed on to Newton, to 

 Franklin, to Faraday, to Maxwell, and to the other great architects 

 of the modern scientific world in which we live — the discovery that 

 man is not a pawn in a game played by higher powers; that his ex- 

 ternal, as well as his internal destiny is in his own hands. 



You may prefer to have me call that not a discovery but a faith. 

 Very well. It is the faith of the scientist, and it is a faith which 

 he will tell you has been justified by works. Take just this one 

 illustration, suggested by the opening remarks of your president. 

 In the mystical, fatalistic ages which preceded, electricity was simply 

 the agent of inscrutable Providence; it was Elijah's fire from Heaven 

 sent down to consume the enemies of Jehovah ; or it was Jove's thun- 

 derbolt hurled by an angry God ; and it was just as impious to study 

 so direct a manifestation of God's power in the world as it would be 

 for a child to study the strap with which he is being punished, or 

 the mental attributes of the father who is behind the strap. It was 

 only 150 years ago that Franklin sent up his famous kite, and showed 

 that these thunderbolts were identical with the sparks which he 

 could draw on a winter's night from his cat's back. Then, 30 years 



