May 12, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



657 



there was some moral process parallel to 

 the process of triangulation, so that the 

 whereabouts, intellectually and spiritually, 

 of some persons could be discovered with 

 more particularity. Yet as I listened to the 

 Secretary of Commerce, I suspected that 

 he was priding himself upon the discovery 

 of a process by which he had discovered the 

 whereabouts of a great many committees of 

 Congress and a great many other persons 

 connected with the process of appropriating 

 public moneys. I have a certain sympathy 

 with those committees of Congress which in 

 investigating the Coast and Geodetic Sur- 

 vey have found that the superintendent had 

 the great advantage of knowing aU about 

 the service and they the great disadvantage 

 of knowing nothing about it. because, as I 

 have said, I have spent a great part of my 

 life in association with men of science and, 

 never having been a man of science, I have 

 at least learned the discretion of keeping 

 my opinions on scientific subjects to myself. 

 I have had association particularly with 

 the very exact and singularly well informed 

 brother of a distinguished gentleman pres- 

 ent. General Scott has a brother who is a 

 member of the faculty of Princeton Uni- 

 versity, and Professor William B. Scott is 

 one of the most provoking men I have ever 

 known. He not only asserts opinions and 

 delivers himself of information upon almost 

 every subject, but the provoking thing 

 about him is he generally knows what he is 

 talking about. A good talker who volun- 

 teers opinions on all subjects ought to be 

 expected in fairness to his fellow men to 

 make a certain large and generous portion 

 of mistakes, because you can at least catch 

 him napping, but Professor Scott is one of 

 those men who successfully — I have some- 

 times told him I suspected adroitly — 

 avoided the pitfalls of eminent conversa- 

 tionalists like himself ; but association with 

 such men has taught me a very great degree 



of discretion and, therefore, I am not going 

 to express any opinion whatever about the 

 work of the Coast and Geodetic Survey. 

 But I am going to give myself the privilege, 

 for it is a real privilege, of saying this: 



This is one of the few branches of the 

 public service in which the motives of those 

 who are engaged can not be questioned. 

 There is something very intensely appeal- 

 ing to the imagination in the intellectual 

 ardor which men bestow upon scientific in- 

 quiry. No social advantage can be gained 

 by it. No pecuniary advantage can be 

 gained by it. In most cases no personal 

 distinction can be gained by it. It is 

 one of the few pursuits in life which 

 gets all its momentum from pure intellec- 

 tual ardor, from a love of finding out what 

 the truth is, regardless of all human cir- 

 cumstances — as if the mind wished to put 

 itself into intimate communication with the 

 mind of the Almighty itself. There is 

 something in scientific inquiry which is 

 eminently spiritual in its nature. It is the 

 spirit of man wishing to square himself 

 accurately with his environment, not only, 

 but also wishing to get at the intimate in- 

 terpretations of his relationship to his en- 

 vironment ; and when you think of what the 

 Geodetic Survey has been attempting to do 

 — to make a sort of profile picture, a sort of 

 profile sketch, of the life of a nation, so far 

 as that life is physically sustained — ^you 

 can see that what we have been doing has 

 been, so to say, to test and outline the whole 

 underpinning of a great civilization, and 

 just as the finding of all the outlines of the 

 earth's surface that underly the sea is a 

 process of making the pathways for the 

 great intercourse which has bound nations 

 together, so the work that we do upon the 

 continent itself is the work of interpreting 

 and outlining the conditions which sur- 

 round the life of a great nation. 



I can illustrate it in this way, the way in 



