Address by Professor Breioer. liii 



seminating the details by which results have been obtained, even 

 if the bare results might be made available through the periodical 

 press or other channels. These publications are an important 

 part of every public library, but by reason of their enormous 

 extent no library can be complete in them. It is only when we 

 attempt to investigate their number in any branch of science that 

 we can appreciate the great influence such associations must have 

 had in diffusing learning and information among the mass of the 

 people and in making it available for their industries, their com- 

 fort and their intellectual pleasure. 



Many of the learned societies maintain libraries and museums, 

 and in some cases these libraries furnish almost the only consider- 

 able scientific literature accessible to the community, while the 

 museum gives them further knowledge of other regions of the 

 earth than their own. 



Finally, learned societies practice and cultivate the brotherhood 

 of mankind as do no other organizations. Science knows no nation 

 nor country ; it is bounded neither by oceans nor continents ; its 

 home can not be located by latitude or longitude ; it knows no 

 race nor people ; it swears special allegiance to no form of gov- 

 ernment ; it is bound by no creed ; it claims no one language. A 

 new fact observed, a new law demonstrated, immediately becomes 

 public property, l^o matter in what continent or country it 

 originates, or to what nation or creed or race the discoverer 

 belongs, or in what language the new truth is first announced ; 

 the learned societies discuss it, and pass upon it, they aid in dis- 

 seminating it, their publications give it a measure of authority, 

 and through the various channels for the diffusion of knowledge 

 it is sure in time to become the common property of mankind. 



The function of these organizations will of course be modified 

 in the new century upon which we are approaching, but it is safe 

 to say that they will conti'ibute as greatly to its jjrogress as they 

 have to that of the century now closing. Societies of one kind 

 and another are to-day so numerous, they embrace such a wide 

 range of objects, and there is gathered into them so large a propor- 

 tion of the active men of all the countries of our modern civiliza- 

 tion, that they have come to be the leading and perhaps the 

 most important factor in shaping and directing human activities, 

 both material and intellectual. 



