314 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 348. 



investigation can be advantageouslj'^ fenced 

 off, either in time or in space, from the rest. 

 While every active worker of this or of any 

 aflBliated society is, in a sense, a specialist, 

 there are occasions when he should unite 

 with his colleagues for the promotion of the 

 interests of science as a whole. The results 

 of the specialists need to be popularized and 

 to be disseminated among the people at 

 large. The advance of knowledge, to be ef- 

 fective with the masses of our race, must be 

 sustained on its merits by a popular verdict. 

 To bring the diverse scientific activities 

 of the American Continent into harmony 

 for common needs ; to secure cooperation 

 for common purposes ; and to disseminate 

 the results of scientific investigation among 

 our fellow-men, are not less, but rather 

 much more, than in the past, the privilege 

 and the duty of The American Association 

 for the Advancement of Science. 



Viewed, then, in its broader aspects, the 

 progress of science is involved in the gen- 

 eral progress of our race ; and those who are 

 interested in promoting the former should 

 be equally earnest in securing the latter. 

 However much we may be absorbed in the 

 details of our specialties, when we stop to 

 think of science in its entirety, we are led, 

 in the last analysis, back to the problem of 

 problems — the meaning of the universe. 

 All men ' gifted with the sad endowment of 

 a contemplative mind ' must recur again 

 and again to this riddle of the centuries. 

 We are, so to speak, whatever our prepos- 

 sessions, all sailing in the same boat on 

 an unknown sea for a destination at best not 

 fully determined. Some there are who have, 

 or think they have, the Pole Star always in 

 sight. Others, though less confident of their 

 bearings, are willing to assume nothing 

 short of second place in the conduct of the 

 ship. Others, still less confident of their 

 bearings, are disposed to depend chiefly on 

 their knowledge of the compass and on 

 their skill in dead reckoning. We of the 



last class may not impugn the motives or 

 doubt the sincerity of the first two classes. 

 We should find it difficult, probably, to dis- 

 pense with their company in so long a 

 journey after becoming so well acquainted 

 with them ; for among them we may each 

 recall not a few of those rarer individuals 

 of the genus homo called angels on earth. 

 But it must be said in all truth, to resume 

 the figure, that they have neither improved 

 much the means of transportation nor per- 

 fected much the art of navigation. They 

 have been sufficiently occupied, perhaps, in 

 allaying the fears of the timid and in re- 

 straining the follies of the mutinous. Other 

 types of mind and other modes of thought 

 than theirs have been essential to work out 

 the improvements which separate the earl- 

 ier from the later nautical equipments of 

 men ; such improvements, for example, as 

 mark the distinction between the dug-out of 

 our lately ackowledged relatives, the Moros 

 and the Tagalogs, from the Atlantic -liner 

 of to-day. 



At any rate, we are confronted by the 

 fact that man's conceptions of the universe 

 have undergone slow but certain enlarge- 

 ment. His early anthropocentric and an- 

 thropomorphic views have been replaced, 

 in so far as he has attained measurable 

 advancement, by views that will bear the 

 tests of astronomy and anthropology. He 

 has learned, slowly and painfully, after re- 

 peated failures and many steps backward, 

 to distinguish, in some regions of thought, 

 the real and the permanent from the fanciful 

 and fleeting phenomena of which he forms 

 a part. His pursuit of knowledge, in so far 

 as it has led him to certainty, has been 

 chiefly a discipline of disillusionment. He 

 has arrived at the truth not so much by the 

 genius of direct discovery as by the labo- 

 rious process of the elimination of error. 

 Hence he who has learned wisdom from ex- 

 perience must look out on the problem of the 

 universe at the beginning of the twentieth 



