SCIENCE AND THE PEOPLE.* 



CHAS. BASKERVILLE. 



Opportunities beget responsibilities. On such an occasion 

 as this, he who has been honored with the opportunity is 

 tempted to address you upon a specialized subject to which he 

 has given years of thought and interest, but the opportunity 

 carries with it corresponding responsibilities beyond the nar- 

 row bounds of one's limited investigations. The audience is 

 composed in part of the general public, which is more or less 

 informed, or misinformed through no self-fault, as to the 

 general trend of scientific thought and movement; in part of 

 students, some enwrapt with the beauty and majesty of 

 ancient art and philosophy, others versed in the history of 

 science and conversant with its latest conceptions; in part, my 

 hearers are specialists in the varied branches of science, so I 

 feel much like Moleschott in his address at the reopening 

 of the University of Rome, when he found himself "in 

 the face of an audience whom he had nothing to teach, but 

 from whom he had much to learn." 



The groundwork of science may be thrown into three divi- 

 sions: (1) laborers who work; (2) tools they must employ; and 

 (3) that which constitutes the fields of their labors. 



In the world we know there is such a thing as progress; that 

 civilization is dependent upon something capable of increase, 

 evidently knowledge. Although, as Schiller has said, "Know- 

 ledge is to one a goddess, to another an excellent cow." yet 

 the momentum of progress is largely, if not altogether, given 

 by science. 



Variation in social conditions have caused variations in 



* Retiring address of the president of the North Carolina Academy of 

 Science. Wake Forest College, May 13, 1904. Science. 2o\ 266-273. 1904. 



68 [Nov. 



