686 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XV. No. 383. 



though such life is neither conscious nor 

 intelligent, it is seen to possess some 

 quality, unknown and as yet incomprehen- 

 sible to us, which is a fair equivalent for 

 intelligence. In short it may even yet be 

 safely said that if hundreds of volumes 

 are required to- contain our knowledge 

 thousands would be necessary to catalogue 

 our ignorances. 



There remains then plenty of work to be 

 done. No one who loves knowledge and is 

 willing to work need ever want object or 

 occupation. Nature's own operations have 

 no more predominant characteristic than 

 their extreme slowness, and it is not sur- 

 prising that our most fruitful researches 

 have in that respect imitated her deliberate 

 and tentative evolutions. But it is en- 

 couraging to remember that whatever 

 moves ceaselessly onward, losing no for- 

 ward step and accumulating all its gains, 

 must in time reach the goal. Though the 

 masses of ignorance are still large and dark 

 before us, knowledge does steadily accumu- 

 late on all our traversed paths. Time is 

 long, and if we cultivate the same untiring 

 patience which Nature has uniformly prac- 

 ticed in her gradual development of all 

 things organic and inorganic, it is but a 

 mathematical axiom that a day must come 

 when we shall overtake her at her work — 

 catch her, as it were, bare armed in her 

 secret workshops, and claim undisputed 

 heirship in all her works. 



The grand results of that full and per- 

 fect knowledge which, though not for us as 

 individuals, must come to our posterity, no 

 mind now living can grasp or estimate. 

 Eecurring for illustration to the oft- 

 quoted and somewhat ill-treated science of 

 anatomy, when that day of complete and 

 perfect knowledge shall arrive, when, for 

 instance, our successors shall have traced 

 out all its mysteries, localized every func- 

 tion, and identified every brain center and 

 worldng cell, why should the future train- 



ing of the individual be limited to the 

 tedious imitative methods to which we are 

 now confined 1 When with perfect knowl- 

 edge we shall know how to treat all the 

 centers of thought and will with wise dis- 

 crimination, stimulating the good and re- 

 pressing the bad, why should it not be 

 possible to cultivate by unerring means 

 intellect and even morals, to produce a 

 great general or an honest statesman when 

 he is most needed, to constitute a new so- 

 ciety as superior to ours as we are to our 

 humblest ancestors of primeval seas? 



Let us not too hastily pronounce the sen- 

 tence of extravagance against such hopes 

 and speculations. To the generations of 

 Galileo and Newton, of Laplace and Dar- 

 win, the first glimmerings of truth reached 

 by those great leaders were equally start- 

 ling. Yet in the lapse of time they have 

 become established facts, on which the 

 world of science plants itself with confi- 

 dence as it moves forward to new conquests. 

 Rather let us by every individual and as- 

 sociate effort preserve in full flower and 

 fruit the vigor of our ancient Society as 

 a center of continued labor. Let us en- 

 courage and stimulate each other in press- 

 ing on toward the attainment of complete 

 knowledge. Because it is that, and that 

 alone, which we cannot but observe, is 

 destined to move onward and upward the 

 world of life, and to maintain our human 

 race in the primacy which it by no means 

 always possessed, but is now claiming with 

 no empty boasts. 



Isaac J. Wistar. 



THE GENERAL MEETING. 



The first general meeting of the Ameri- 

 can Philosophical Society was held in 

 Philadelphia on April 3, 4 and 5, 1902. 

 Founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743 

 the Society is the oldest scientific organiza- 

 tion in America devoted to the advance- 

 ment of general knowledge; and although 



