170 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVIII. No. 449. 



day are more in touch with the throbbing-, 

 vibrating life of humanity, even though 

 they may not claim the profundity of 

 thought that lived in the master of 

 ' Trinity. ' 



If there be one characteristic more than 

 another of our age and day, it is the steady 

 welding and cooperative development pro- 

 ceeding among the leading races of the 

 world. Nowhere is this seen on so phe- 

 nomenal a scale as in our country, where, 

 with the Anglo-Celt, Jew and Greek, 

 Frank and German, Italian and Norseman 

 together ply the arts of peace. And why 

 such a commingling of human lives? The 

 answer may be given, and so far well, that 

 here liberty is assured to all, that equal 

 rights and equal opportunities come to all. 

 Back of this, however, is the basic fact 

 that in this coimtry scientific progress has 

 been comparatively unhampered by costly 

 patent laws, by hereditary vested rights, 

 by lands being held in the hands of a few. 

 But perhaps above all, and permeating all, 

 though often silently working, there exists 

 a keen and rapid method of inductive rea- 

 soning that carries forward the individual 

 and the community on progressive and yet 

 safe lines. It is this method, applied to all 

 branches of science with increasing exact- 

 ness, as human freedom increasingly as- 

 serted itself during the bygone century, 

 which has culminated in the marvelous sci- 

 entific position occupied by the country 

 to-day. 



Our Sigma Xi Society, as a university 

 organization, stands for 'the nobility of 

 science.' What then is its relation to the 

 university on the one hand, and to the 

 common life of mankind on the other? In 

 reply, let me quickly review the growth of 

 universities during the past millennium. 

 With Lacroix we may regard the University 

 of Paris as the first great effort made by 

 Abelard and his successors to dispel the 



shades of the dark ages. Here in the four 

 nations met scholars of every language, 

 creed and degree of poverty or wealth. A 

 thirst for learning was their common bond. 

 Later the Universities of Bologna, Padua 

 and Oxford widened and deepened the 

 channel of democratic learning, that spread 

 out and vivified Europe. It is noteworthy 

 that amid all the machinations of emper- 

 ors, kings, popes and knights the fearless 

 champions of freedom of thought, and so 

 of freedom of the individual, from the 

 tenth to the fourteenth century, issued 

 from the imiversities, and were often more 

 powerful, and more feared by autocratic 

 rulers, than armed hosts. 



But the appearance in succession of 

 Galileo, Francis Bacon, Descartes and New- 

 ton, with many lesser lights clustered 

 round, gave rise to that comparatively re- 

 cent university renaissance which is spread- 

 ing to widest proportions in our own land 

 and time. We owe it almost wholly to the 

 close pursuit of accurate inductive, scien- 

 tific methods, which have yielded deduc- 

 tions of profoundest value. By slow de- 

 grees, through observation and experiment, 

 fact has been cumulated on fact, till these 

 have, in their combined perfection, per- 

 mitted some great hypothesis to be ad- 

 vanced, or some great law to be deduced, 

 that has grouped all lesser laws in crystal- 

 like symmetry. 



But only after the biological inductions 

 and deductions of Lamarck, Spencer, Wal- 

 lace and Darwin were we in position to 

 apply scientific methods to living things, to 

 man himself. One fundamental keynote 

 of their teachings is that 'Use vindicates 

 and prolongs existence.' The cry is still 

 raised, though from a scattered remnant 

 that is fast being left in the rear of educa- 

 tional progress, that utilitai-ianism is 

 disastrous to university education and to 

 highest scholarship. This remnant desii-es 



