684 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1907. 
Then he added: “ I was talking last night of the past, with Madame 
Berthelot, and we arrived at the conclusion that I had not lived a 
year without having a struggle to keep up.” Sincerity always ends 
in triumph. On November 24, 1901, in that memorable meeting on 
the fiftieth anniversary of the professor’s scientific career, the scholars 
of the whole world came to pay their respects in recognition and ad- 
miration of Berthelot. 
After having listened to several of the two hundred addresses 
coming from all corners of the civilized world, Berthelot arose and in 
the midst of the general emotion, in a clear and distinct voice, made 
a memorable speech, of which I shall try here to recall the beginning: 
I am profoundly touched and completely overcome by the honors that you 
bestow upon me at this moment. These honors, I know, are not due alone to 
your personal regard for me; I should attribute them also to my age, to my 
long labors, and to such services as I have been able to render to our country 
and our fellow-men. 
To my age first of all. Your sympathy makes it shine like the last burst of 
light from a lamp on the point of being extinguished in eternal night! The 
respect that humanity pays to the aged is the expression of the binding force 
that unites the present generations with those that have preceded us, and with 
those that are to follow. 
What we are is due but in small measure to our own labor and to our per- 
sonal individuality, for we owe it almost entirely to our ancestors—ancestors 
by blood and ancestors of our character. If any of us add anything to the com- 
mon good in the realm of science, of art, or of morality, it is because a long line 
of generations has lived, toiled, thought, and suffered before us. It is the 
patient efforts of our predecessors that has created this science that you honor 
to-day. 
Each one of us, whatever has been his individual initiative, should likewise 
attribute a considerable part of his success to contemporary scholars competing 
with him in the great common task. 
In fact, for the brilliant discoveries of the past century, for these discoveries, 
let us proclaim it boldly, no one person has at all the right to claim exclusive 
merit. Science is essentially a collective work, pursued during the course of 
time by the efforts of a multitude of workers of every age and of every nation, 
succeeding themselves and associating by virtue of a tacit understanding for 
the search for pure truth and for the applications of that truth to the continuous 
betterment of the condition of all mankind. 
