184 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918. 



degree of perfection. Indeed there was in that century, so Professor 

 Breasted says, an industrial progress which has never been equaled 

 at any time in the world's history until within the last 100 years, 

 when the modern industrial revolution set in. 



Go now to Greek history, and we find the same sort of a situation. 

 About 500 B. C. the Greeks got the key to a certain type of progress, 

 and they developed a civilization which on the intellectual side, and 

 on the artistic and esthetic side, has never been equaled. The 

 Greeks, like the Egyptians, got the key to a certain kind of civiliza- 

 tion and they worked it out to marvelous perfection. But in neither 

 case did these men or these races go on; they did not open up new 

 fields; they did not tap new mines. Their civilization came to an 

 apex, and then decayed; and the question has often arisen in your 

 minds, as it has in mine, Is this age in which we are living going to 

 follow in the same way ? Have we risen to a maximum ? Have we 

 had a period of marvelous development which is going to be fol- 

 lowed by one of decay and stagnation, or are we going to ascend to 

 higher and higher levels? No man can answer that question; but 

 this 1 know and this you know, that it was wholly unnecessary that 

 Greek civilization, or that Egyptian civilization, should have stopped 

 when it did. If the Egyptians and the Greeks had developed the 

 modern scientific spirit, the spirit of search for new phenomena and 

 new methods, they could have found them. There were plenty of 

 new mines for them to tap, plenty of unexplored fields to search out. 

 But they did not do it. As for us I feel just as sure as Shakespeare 

 did that "there are still more things in heaven and earth than are 

 dreamed of in our philosophy," and if we stop, it will be because we 

 have forgotten the lesson which Galileo first tried to teach, and 

 which we have been learning in the last 100 j^ears, and that is the 

 lesson of research. It is the lesson, the philosophy, the method, and 

 the faith of modern physics. That is our hope, and if we keep that, 

 if we do not call in our scouts because the rewards are larger in 

 the applications, then I have no doubt that our civilization will 

 go on; but if we do call in our scouts here in this country, then 

 our civilization will give place to that of some other country which 

 does not do so, but which learns the value for the human race of 

 the spirit of modern scientific research. 



