nature, and of the inventor who applies these laws to 

 utilitarian purposes, are rarely united in the same per- 

 son. If the one conspicuous exception which the past 

 century presents to this rule is not unique, we should 

 probably have to go back to Watt to find another. 



From this viewpoint it is clear that the primary 

 agent in the movement which has elevated man to the 

 masterful position he now occupies is the scientific 

 investigator. He it is whose work has deprived plague 

 and pestilence of their terrors, alleviated human suffer- 

 ing, girdled the earth with the electric wire, bound the 

 continent with the iron way, and made neighbors of the 

 most distant nations. As the first agent which has 

 made possible this meeting of his representatives, let his 

 evolution be this day our worthy theme. As we follow 

 the evolution of an organism by studying the stages of 

 its growth, so we have to show how the work of the 

 scientific investigator is related to the ineffectual efforts 

 of his predecessors. 



In our time we think of the process of development 

 in nature as one going continuously forward through 

 the combination of the opposite processes of evolution 

 and dissolution. The tendency of our thought has 

 been in the direction of banishing cataclysms to the 

 theological limbo, and viewing nature as a sleepless 

 plodder, endowed with infinite patience, waiting through 

 long ages for results. I do not contest the truth of 

 the principle of continuity on which this view is based. 

 But it fails to make known to us the whole truth. The 

 building of a ship from the time that her keel is laid 

 until she is making her way across the ocean is a slow 

 and gradual process ; yet there is a cataclysmic epoch 



7 



