474 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



expresses itself in the potent urge to social excellency- 

 Doubtless the highest forms of satisfaction are not found 

 in the hedonic consequence of sensory stimulation but 

 in the consciousness of difficulties mastered. Even the 

 sex instinct, while it consists of an immediate impulse 

 towards the object of its love, has a remoter meaning in 

 the perpetuation of the race and the foundation of the 

 one of the most important social institutions, the home. 

 Again, consider the instinct of curiosity, which, starting 

 with a manipulatory disposition for the purpose of dis- 

 covery, when stimulated by an object, a noise, or a taste, 

 is nevertheless an urge to far reaching explanatory re- 

 search. Simple as it may appear in the animal or in the 

 young child, it is the dynamic that moves the scientist 

 to unravel the mysteries of nature. 



There can be no doubt that the discoveries of the 

 scientists have had great practical value when applied to 

 the affairs of everyday life. I am the last man to quar- 

 rel with the pragmatist at this point, but I am convinced 

 that the great urge felt by the scientist is not primarily 

 practical utility. It was rather a more consistent and 

 harmonious organization of experience. It was the inter- 

 est of the knower in the thing to be known. At any rate 

 I cannot see what great practical difference it would 

 make to the multitude of earth's toilers whether the 

 "Nebular Hypothesis" of LaPlace or the "Planetesimal 

 Theory" of Chamberlain and Moulton will ultimately 

 prove true. And yet the Chicago men have worked long 

 and hard that they might organize astronomical facts 

 into consistent and harmonious relations to each other. 

 Man has the conviction that the universe is knowable and 

 feels a strong impulse to know it. 



The hostility of nature to man and his enterprises is 

 apparent to all. We need no Schopenhauer to tell us 

 that from the standpoint of human interest nature must 

 be reconstructed. Nature does not adequately shelter 

 man from her own inclemencies. Little of the food he 

 eats is allowed to remain in the form in which he finds 

 it. The swamp and marshes are not compatible with the 

 cultivated tastes of the artist. The landscape gardener 

 does not adjust himself to what he finds, but aims to re- 



