JANUARY 5, 1912] 
which he could wrest a rule from nature—a law— 
and in which he studies each individual instance 
to find that law, or, if he thinks he has found it, 
to make the instance square with the law, exercises 
the judicial faculty in a different branch, but with 
the same necessity for absolute adherence to truth 
in order that a useful result may be reached—no 
forcing of a theory, no construction of individual 
instances in order to make a theory, if those in- 
stances really don’t fit into it; and if I know the 
weakness of the scientist or the temptation of a 
scientist, it is in reference to just such cases as 
that. Just as the judge upon the bench, with a 
weakness for deciding a case in advance, because 
he has heard one or two things in it, and then tries 
to square everything else that comes along to his 
original theory, so, too, with you. I have no doubt 
that what you have to struggle against is too 
quick recognition of something that leads you to 
discover a law. Subsequent study changes your 
mind about it and then you have to go back and 
build up a new theory or law, slowly, deliberately, 
but with strict adherence to truth and a desire to 
find the truth until you finally conquer and reach 
a conclusion that will bear the test of every 
instance. 
Dr. Walcott, Secretary of the Smith- 
sonian Institution, who was to have given 
the second address of welcome, was absent 
through illness. 
President Bessey responded to the ad- 
dress of welcome, as follows: 
Mr. President: 
The members of the American Association for 
the Advancement of Science feel it to be a great 
honor to be welcomed to the capital of the country 
by its foremost citizen, the president of the United 
States. 
In theory at least scientific men are like the 
men who frequent this city. They are here for a 
particular purpose. They work for the good of the 
community. They are not working for their own 
advancement. They are servants of the people. 
In all these things we are like the men who occupy 
legislative, judicial or executive positions in this 
capital city. 
But, Mr. President, you will permit me to sug- 
gest, without unseemly egotism, that in the coming 
of this body of scientific men to the capital, we 
represent more than an invasion of an equal num- 
ber of congressmen, judges and executive officers. 
If I may be allowed to say it, the latter represent 
SCLENCE 3 
present problems and needs, and deal only with 
the things of immediate importance. They are 
time servers often, or may be mostly in the better 
sense, but still servers of the present time. And 
no one will question the usefulness of the man who 
honestly and conscientiously serves his day and 
generation—his time. 
To the man of science the past, the present, the 
future, are spread out as the great panorama of 
nature on which are sketched the successive pic- 
tures of an eternity of change and evolution, whose 
beginning we do not know, and of whose end we 
have no conception. The politician works wholly 
in the present and for the present: the scientist’s 
work carries him back through eons of duration 
to the dawn of eternity, and forward through 
countless millenniums to a possible twilight time 
of the universe. 
I am not saying that all scientists live in the 
eternities in this high fashion, nor am I denying 
that there are great minded statesmen who live in 
a present which is illumined by the past, and 
beckoned by the future. No, I would not dare to 
claim so much for all who enroll in the ranks of 
science, and certainly we know of some men in 
public life whose breadth of view on the political 
questions of the day entitles them to the distin- 
guished name of statesmen. 
So I stand here representing a body of men, in 
some respects like those who are visibly engaged 
in conducting the government of the country, but 
in other respects constituting a very different 
body, and it is on their behalf that I thank you 
sincerely for the cordial welcome you have ex- 
tended to us. 
But while I speak I am reminded that in these 
later years you have taken into the service of the 
government many hundreds of trained scientific 
men, and that these men by their labors are help- 
ing you to solve some of the most difficult prob- 
lems that the government has had to face. With 
these men we who assemble here to-day have 
close ties and cordial sympathies. We remember 
that although in government service they are still 
scientific men, and that the problems you have 
placed before them are scientific problems. And 
we are anxious, Mr. President, that these brothers 
of ours shall have full opportunity for doing well 
the work put before them. We are glad that by 
the establishment of an enlightened system of 
laws controlling the civil service this body of 
scientists has been lifted out of the reach of petty 
personal politics. That has made it possible for 
