1 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Low's. 



thought and life and in both directions they have resulted 

 from the influence of science. 



Let me first say a word on the way in which science has 

 come to sum up human power. Careless observers call this a 

 materialistic age and not wholly without reason, for beyond 

 all ages in the past it depends for its civilization upon material 

 aids. One of the great facts in the world's history during the 

 past half century is that applied science has come to control 

 our daily life — that the engineer has come to his own. I 

 need not speak on the material changes which this revolu- 

 tion has caused. I should think it very foolish were 

 I to attempt to tell you of these facts here in St. Louis, 

 where the assembled products of human effort have just 

 been placed before your eyes and minds. Let me speak of 

 them only as examples of human power. These changes in 

 our environment have not come about as the result of an 

 ignoble love of ease, or of an equally ignoble desire for gain. 

 They have arisen, in part, out of that desire for the mastery 

 of the earth which has been one of the great possessions of 

 the human race from the beginning. That spirit of conquest 

 which inspired all of the pioneers of the world ; which has 

 been a peculiar possession of our own race ; which led your 

 fathers to found St. Louis; has in these last days, when the 

 earth as a planet has been conquered, greatly inspired men to 

 become masters of the earth in a new sense. It leads them 

 to employ that knowledge which science has brought them, 

 so that they may control and better the conditions of life ; 

 to seek new possessions for mankind in the untrodden paths 

 of knowledge instead of the unknown world of forest or 

 prairie. 



In still another way this applied science stands for power. 

 It displays before our eyes and makes real in our lives the 

 inner force of man's constructive imagination. We do very 

 ill if the triumphs of engineering skill, among which we live 

 and move, display to us only a desire to add to our comfort. 

 We do still worse if, with those who look on the world in the 

 temper of Carlyle, we feel that they are but the means for 

 fools to move about a little more rapidly, to communicate 



