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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIII, No. 1115 



which it appeals to my imagination : I have 

 always maintained that it was a great mis- 

 take to begin a history of the United States 

 intended for beginners by putting at the 

 front of the book a topographical map of 

 this continent, or at any rate of that por- 

 tion of it which is occupied by the United 

 States, because if you begin with that, you 

 seem to begin to deal with children when 

 you deal with the first settlers. They know 

 nothing about it. They expected to find the 

 Pacific over the slope of the Alleghanies. 

 They expected to find some Eldorado at the 

 sources of the first great river whose mouth 

 they entered upon the coast. They went 

 groping for the outlines of the continent 

 like blind men feeling their way through 

 a jungle. They were as big men as we, as 

 intelligent; they had as full a grasp upon 

 the knowledge of their time as we have 

 upon the knowledge of ours; but set the 

 youngster in the school to watch these men 

 groping, and he will get the impression that 

 they were children and pygmies. That is 

 not the way to begin the history of the 

 United States. You will understand it only 

 if you comprehend how little of what the 

 work of this department of the govern- 

 ment, for example, has since disclosed, was 

 known to those then engaged in this great 

 romantic enterprise of peopling a new con- 

 tinent and building up a new civilization 

 in a new world. 



So that you have the picture of a service 

 like this lifting the curtain that before that 

 time rested upon all the great spaces of 

 nature. You remember how in the early 

 history of Virginia a little company of 

 gentlemen moved by a sort of scientific 

 curiosity, and yet moved by a spirit of ad- 

 venture still more, penetrated no further 

 than to some of the unknown fastnesses of 

 the Alleghany Mountains and were there- 

 after known as the Knights of the Golden 



Horseshoe — given a sort of knighthood of 

 adventure because they went a little way 

 upon the same quest upon which you gentle- 

 men have gone a great way. 



So when I stand in the presence of scien- 

 tific men I seem to stand in the presence of 

 those who are given the privilege, the sin- 

 gular privilege, the almost contradictory 

 privilege, of following a vision of the mind 

 with open, physical eyes; making real the 

 things that have been conjectural; making 

 substantial the things that have been intan- 

 gible. 



And as the Secretary of Commerce has 

 said, there is a great human side to the 

 things that you are doing. You are ma- 

 king it safe to bind the world together with 

 those great shuttles that we call ships that 

 move in and out and weave the fabric of 

 international intercourse. You are pro- 

 viding the machinery by which the web of 

 humanity is woven. It is only by these 

 imaginative conceptions, it is only by vi- 

 sions of the mind,, that we are inspired. If 

 we thought about each other too much, our 

 little jealousies, our rivalries, our small- 

 nesses, our weaknesses, there would be no 

 courage left in our hearts. 



Sometimes when the day is done and the 

 consciousness of the sordid struggle is upon 

 you, you go to bed wondering if the sun 

 will seem bright in the morning, the day 

 worth while, but you have only to sweep 

 these temporary things away and to look 

 back and see mankind working its way, 

 though never so slowly, up the slow steps 

 which it has climbed to know itself and to 

 know nature and nature's God, and to 

 know the destiny of mankind, to have all 

 these little things seem like the mere mists 

 that creep along the ground, and have all 

 the courage come back to you by lifting 

 your eyes to those blue heavens where rests 

 the serenity of thought. 



