ASSOCIATION FOR ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 467 



cerned, in the history of the race. Within this period every science 

 has been recast and rewritten, and divisions and subdivisions of the 

 old units have gone forward and are still in progress. Of every 

 one of these sciences the boundaries have been so enormously ex- 

 tended that even the dream of universal knowledge on the part of 

 any man has gone by, never to return. Leibnitz, it has been said, 

 was the last of the intellectual giants of old who mastered all that 

 was knowable in his day. Alexander von Humboldt could almost 

 claim the same for the knowledge of Nature that was attainable in 

 the first quarter of our century. But since the application of the 

 compound microscope to the study of Nature and the subdivisions 

 of the sciences that have resulted therefrom, and especially since 

 the extension of the method of science to all the branches of an- 

 thropology, as language, history, institutions, the task of mastering 

 all that is known is seen to be altogether too great for finite powers 

 and span-long lives. 



It might well be, therefore, in view of the amazing changes that 

 have taken place in the entire field covered by the association, that 

 it should have outgrown the aims and ambitions of its early days. 

 The fact that it continues to use the identical statement of its ob- 

 jects with which it began its work, while it does not definitely settle 

 the question, affords at least presumptive evidence that no such 

 change has taken place. 



How, then, do the objects originally recognized by the associa- 

 tion as its raison d'etre correspond to the needs of our own time ? 



1. Is the social feature of the association, to which the first 

 place was assigned by the founders, whether by design or not, 

 worthy of preservation by us? In other words, is it as important 

 " to promote intercourse between those who are cultivating science 

 in America " at the close of the nineteenth century as it was at the 

 middle of the century the need that was responded to by the for- 

 mation of the American Association for the Advancement of Sci- 

 ence ? While revolutionary changes have taken place in the country 

 at large during this period in modes of travel, facilities for acquir- 

 ing education, and the diffusion of intelligence, it would be hard to 

 show why the need in this field should be in any respect less urgent. 

 There is a far larger number of people who are cultivating science, 

 and there are many more branches of science to be cultivated. 



What particular service is to be expected from such intercourse 

 as the association seeks to provide? The gathering of the workers 

 in the diverse fields of science into a single organization has a tend- 

 ency to unify them. They find that a common spirit animates 

 them, that they all make use of essentially the same method of re- 

 search or inquiry, and that the results which they reach all have a 



