Sigma Xi II 261 



realm of investigation which deals with the relations of 

 things and whose only possible practical outcome is in 

 the elaboration of instruments, tools, by which other 

 forms of research may be more fortunately pursued, as 

 when Maxwell's mathematics confirmed the inspiration 

 of Faraday, moving through pathless space on lines of 

 inexpressible complexity, invisible and yet secure. Here 

 the mind is not disturbed by practical relation of any 

 sort whatever; its exercise is pure intellectual delight. 

 At Atlanta, in the winter of 1913, the president of Sec- 

 tion "B" of the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science declared that "Frazier's series reveals 

 the transcendence of analysis over geometric perception. 

 It signalizes the flight of the human intellect beyond the 

 bounds of the senses." Applied science, pure science, 

 scientific theory ladies and gentlemen, in one or other 

 of these great fields your privilege shall lie. Sigma Xi 

 in this hour of your initiation makes of you but two 

 demands : 



1. Appreciation. She asks you to appreciate, to love 

 with unusual devotion the kind of work to which your 

 attention is thus so briefly called, and in which you no 

 doubt have already found some experience, however 

 slight. 



2. Participation. She asks you, in so far as the cir- 

 cumstances of coming years allow, to devote at least part 

 of your daily toil to some problem all unsolved ; whether 

 in the noble application of scientific fact to relief of hu- 

 man need; whether in the discovery of new fact, the 

 proclamation of truth unheard; whether in the more 

 lonely task, where only the laws of mathematical reason- 



