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Science is knowledge. The love of knowledge is the char- 

 acteristic of man as a rational creature. What Avill he not do 

 and dare to attain it ? The icy deserts of the frigid zone have 

 no terrors for him, if he can but gain one glimpse of the open 

 polar sea. The torrid heats, the sickly air, the savage beasts, 

 the more savage men of tropical Africa, are but exhilarating 

 incidents to the explorer bent on discovering the sources of 

 the J^iie. There is no process so hidden, no secret so with- 

 drawn, no mystery of life or death, of mind or matter, so 

 dark that it is not tried with his incessant questioning. Sick- 

 ness and poverty, privation and death, he will endure to ob- 

 tain knowledge. The divine hunger of his thought is never 

 satisfied, its immortal thirst is never quenched. Knowledge 

 to knowledge is fuel added to the flame. The desire grows 

 with what it feeds on. Its universal sign is an unresting 

 activity of intellect that starts a new vitality and growth in 

 every field of human life which it touches. This is the spirit 

 that dominates the age — a 



"spirit yearning in desire 

 To follow knowledge like a sinking star 

 Bej'ond the utmost bound of human thought." 



Science too is power. How grand are its achievements ! 

 They are the pride of the race, which they exalt and ennoble. 

 It bridges the river, it tunnels the mountain, it constructs the 

 water-wheel, it builds the dam ; the monster steam it har- 

 nesses to every burden, and sets him grinding in the mill ; 

 across continents and through roaring gulfs, it darts the articu- 

 late message ; it parries the lightning stroke ; it gives the 

 landscape and the portrait from the flashing pencil of the 

 sun ; the tortures of the scalpel it turns to a peaceful dream. 

 Among its myriad manifestations contemplate for a moment 

 one — the brilliant demonstration of Le Verrier. Basing 

 his calculation upon certain observed perturbations of the 

 celestial bodies, he announces that on a given night upon the 

 front of the heavens, there will appear a planet whose light 



