96 | CHAIRMAN’S ANNUAL REPORT. 
primal impulse and of mutual gravitation. The former 
prevents the heavenly bodies from falling together, the 
latter keeps them from wandering off into the depths of 
space. 
There is something so awe inspiring in the vastness of 
the heavenly bodies, their immense distances, and their 
enormous velocities, that one isin danger of being puffed 
up with the pride of intellect that the human mind can 
trace the orbits of the planets, weigh the sun itself, and 
take up the planets and their satellites, weigh them as 
in scales, foretell eclipses for centuries to come, and give, 
better than the actual observers, the time of beginning 
and ending of eclipses that occurred thousands of years 
ago. ‘This all seems so great that we are tempted to ask, 
What is there that the human intellect cannot do? But 
when we look at the narrow bounds within which our 
calculus must work, then our pride comes down. The 
man who can trace a comet into the depths of almost 
infinite space, and tell where the goal is around which 
it wheels at the end of its course, and can announce the 
hour of its return, cannot tell where a falling leaf will 
strike the ground, nor trace a foot of its path. Every- 
where we find problems to which our best solutions 
are but approximations, from which we have carefully 
eliminated the real difficulties. 
The lesson is one of modesty and humility in the pres- 
ence of infinitely profounder problems that meet us 
on every side. 
Mr. Charles N. Arnold, chairman, presented his annual 
report, as follows: 
Members of the Scientific Section of the Vassar Brothers 
Institute : 
The meetings of the Scientific Section, Vassar Brothers 
Institute for the season of 1887-88 have been held with 
the customary recularity. 
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