Maech 31, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



447 



of which would vow to devote themselves to 

 the cause of truth, to deal justly and cour- 

 teously with one another and with all 

 laborers for that cause and to keep the 

 scientific record purged of what is false or 

 mean. 



Not to dwell further on this subject, I 

 will now briefly emphasize the central 

 points of this address : 



The first is that absolute truth is not 

 knowable, and that even to the end of time 

 it will be so. 



The unfinished window in Aladdin's Tower 

 Unfinished must remain. 



The second point is that scientific truth 

 of any age is that which works and conse- 

 quently it may change and present a new 

 aspect with each succeeding generation. 



The third is that the scientific spirit is, 

 when rigorously exercised, the only test of 

 what works or what is scientific truth. 



The last point is that science is not and 

 never can be infallible, and we should be 

 thankful for that, for, if it assumed infalli- 

 bility, the progress of the human mind on 

 the path of truth would cease. 



Before I conclude finally I would call 

 attention to a rendition of the ideal scien- 

 tific spirit which is to be found in a passage 

 of Tennyson's "Ulysses." The old hero 

 is there represented as having, after ten 

 long years before the walls of Troy and ten 

 more years of peril and adventure on the 

 sea, returned to Ithaca, his old home, and 

 as now resolving to take up the life of 

 change and discovery even though the gulfs 

 should wash him down. The passage which 

 I quote should be indelibly fixed in the 

 memory of every scientific worker: 



I am a part of all that I have met; 



Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' 



Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades 



Forever and forever when I move. 



How dull it were to pause, to make an end, 



To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! 



As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life 



Were all too little, and of one to me 



Little remains, but every hour is saved 



From that eternal silence, something more, ~ 



A bringer of new things, and vile it .were 



For some three suns to store and hoard myself. 



And this gray spirit yearning in desire 



To follow knowledge, like a sinking star. 



Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. 



A. B. Macallum 

 University op Toronto 



EUGENE WOLDEMAR HILGARD, A 

 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



Eugene Woldemar Hilgaed was born Jan- 

 uary 5, 1833, at Zweibruecken, in Ehenish Ba- 

 varia, the son of Theodore Erasmus and Mar- 

 garethe Hilgard, and was the youngest of a 

 family of four sons and five daughters. Hia 

 father was a lawyer, holding the position of 

 chief justice of the court of appeals of the 

 province. Judge Hilgard, having been born 

 and educated under the shadow of the French 

 Revolution, and being of pronounced liberal 

 views, stoutly opposed the supersedence of the 

 code JSTapoleon by the illiberal laws of the old 

 regime. In 1836, when at the fullness of a 

 successful career, he determined to emigrate 

 to America with his family and settled on a 

 farm at Belleville, Illinois. As the public 

 schools of that day were quite primitive. 

 Judge Hilgard personally undertook the prep- 

 aration of his sons for entrance to the univer- 

 sities. Eugene was in readiness in 1849 and 

 in that year returned to Germany to attend 

 the University of Heidelberg, graduating with 

 honors and a doctor's degree with summa cum 

 laude in 1853. This degree was re-issued to 

 him in 1903 as a " golden degree " in recogni- 

 tion of half a century's good work for science. 

 He studied also in Zurich and Freiberg, in 

 Saxony. After graduating in 1853 he visited 

 Spain and met Miss J. Alexandrina Bello, 

 daughter of Colonel Bello, of the Spanish 

 army, whom he married several years later. 

 Returning to America, he began geological 

 exploration work in Mississippi in 1855 and 

 was appointed state mineralogist of that state 

 in 1858. In 1860 he revisited Spain, married 



