692 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



osity of the cities where it met for the publication of its " Pro- 

 ceedings." Since that time it had been able to pay all its expenses, 

 had acquired a valuable stock of " Proceedings," and possessed a 

 cash balance amounting (with interest) to more than two thou- 

 sand dollars. As president of the Portland meeting of 1873, he 

 emphasized, in his reception address, as the one object of the Asso- 

 ciation, the advancement of science in the United States. " Few 

 of us," he said, " can aspire to the honor of being discoverers of 

 the laws of nature, in the high sense of that phrase. But no one, 

 however humble his capacities, or however limited his opportu- 

 nities, who labors for science, will fail to advance it and be re- 

 warded by it. We meet together from year to year, the veterans 

 in science, with the younger aspirants for distinction, and many 

 more who long to catch the earliest tidings of the last word which 

 Science has to say in regard to the earth under our feet or the 

 stars above us ; a few to speak but many more to listen ; but each 

 doing his part to advance science, either by active research or 

 encouraging sympathy. Our brief meetings allow us no leisure 

 to listen to what is old or to what may be read in books, or to 

 glittering generalities, or ingenious speculations on the universe, 

 unsupported by evidence and individual investigation. But any 

 new fact, however microscopic, any new investigation, whether it 

 concerns a planet or an atom, any new experiment in which a law 

 of nature is made more palpable and convincing, finds with us a 

 ready welcome." The members, he added, did not concern them- 

 selves with the utility of the truths which were communicated at 

 these meetings. If they had no immediate practical value, it was 

 sufficient for them that they were true and revealed the plans of 

 the Creator. " It is impossible for the man of science to serve 

 two masters, the Kingdom of Nature and Mammon. It is a dan- 

 gerous thing for him to be thinking of the utility of his discov- 

 eries, or of the pecuniary profit which may be made out of them." 

 In his retiring address, in 1874, which was published in the 

 " Monthly " for December, 1874, and January, 1875, Prof. Lovering 

 spoke of " Instruments in Physical Progress " and " Mathematical 

 Investigations in Physics," and sketched the resources and present 

 attitude of the physical sciences. He presented the view that 

 " the great problem of the day is how to subject all physical phe- 

 nomena to dynamical laws. With all the experimental devices 

 and all the mathematical appliances of this generation, the human 

 mind has been baffled in its attempts to construct a universal 

 science of physics. But nothing will discourage it ; when foiled 

 in one direction, it will attack in another. Science is not destruc- 

 tive, but progressive ; while its theories change, the facts remain. 

 Its generalizations are widening and deepening from age to age. 

 We may extend to all the theories of physical science the remark 



