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The Academy may do a great service also to our own people, 

 by helping to increase their interest in their native state by 

 increasing their knowledge of it, and by giving them new op- 

 portunities to contribute to its welfare. Loyalty is an emo- 

 tion based on personal knowledge, on personal experience, and 

 especially on personal service. The more we know of this 

 great, rich, powerful, prosperous, and progressive common- 

 wealth ; the more definitely we can realize the conditions out of 

 which, and the processes by which, it has come to its present 

 high estate : the more justly we can estimate the energies work- 

 ing in its bosom for the future welfare of its people ; and es- 

 pecially the more confidently we can be permitted to feel that 

 we have personally contributed something, however little, but 

 still our best, to its progress and its happiness, — the more de- 

 voted will be our attachment to it, and the greater, consequent- 

 ly, will be our future service. It is the one greatest and best 

 function of this State Academy to make the State of Illinois 

 known to itself. 



Loyalty and state pride are, however, by-products of a scien- 

 tific society, to which many other societies of various kind and 

 aim may contribute equally. Our own special mission is the 

 aid and advancement of scientific research and the populariza- 

 tion and propagation of its results. For both these aims we 

 need to bring the scientific men and the people of the state 

 into closer and more frequent contact, in ways and under condi- 

 tions to increase the popular respect for scientific work and 

 the popular appreciation of its outcome, and also to interest 

 our scientific men more strongly in problems affecting the gen- 

 eral welfare. Especially we must remind the absorbed investi- 

 gator that it is the part of science to understand its own en- 

 vironment, and to adapt itself thereto; that science is not, and 

 perhaps can never be, wholly self-sustaining, especially in a 

 democracy; and that without the broadest possible basis in 

 popular gratitude and regard, the progress of science will be 

 needlessly retarded and its development delayed. The happy 

 thought of an annual symposium on some subject of primary 

 importance and strong human interest is, I think, a great help 



