March 17, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



405 



learned societies. But it is nevertheless 

 true that in comparison with the famous 

 academies of the old world we are as yet 

 mere children. In a history of the essen- 

 tials in the progress of science, there is but 

 rare need of the mention of American ac- 

 complishments. We have much of the 

 practise, and we show a degree of inde- 

 pendence in our imitations; but we lack 

 the philosophic depth, the intuitions and 

 the profound originality. It is to the law- 

 giver of science that the true academy is 

 born, and it is by her lawgivers again that 

 it must be nurtured. To men of exquisite 

 genius no climate within the whole range 

 of our immense country has yet been con- 

 genial. 



We are apt to smile at the Englishman 

 for the letters which decorate his name. 

 We laugh at the German for his titles and 

 at the Frenchman for his ribbons and his 

 uniform. We smile because to us such 

 insignia mean nothing; and it is to our 

 shame. We forget that these symbols voice 

 a sentiment of almost religious purity. We 

 have not yet learned to constitute nor even 

 to revere a tribunal so august as to be in- 

 compatible with pettiness. We never ask 

 why the F.R.S. is inseparable from the 

 names of Lord Kelvin, of Lord Lister, even 

 in their age and amid the splendors of their 

 glory. To make the French Academy, 

 even on its scientific side, required- the 

 brains of Cuvier, of Lamarck, of St. Hil- 

 aire, of Buffon, of the brothers Jussieu, of 

 Pasteur ; it required Laplace, Lavoisier and 

 Lagrange, Carnot and Cauchy, Fresnel and 

 Fourier, Ampere and Arago, Poisson and 

 Poinsot, to mention only a few ; and the 

 dictum of the academy arbitrates with the 

 authority of these tremendous names. 



Precisely to such bodies of inexorable 

 critics did the intrinsic strength of the 

 work of Professor Packard ultimately ap- 

 peal. And it was from the judgment of 

 his confreres, from the men who had them- 



selves traversed the same intellectual terri- 

 tory and knew it, that he reaped his su- 

 preme honors. From these alone could the 

 reward have come ; for below the decisions 

 of his peers, there was no other guide but 

 conscience. 



Few of us realize how difficult it is, what 

 persistent convictions, what sturdy vigil- 

 ance is required to enter seriously into 

 competition with the whole world, as Pack- 

 ard did ; indeed one might say to enter 

 handicapped, against a world richer in its 

 traditions, more refined in its higher intel- 

 lectual atmosphere, more bountiful in its 

 opportunities, than our young country. It 

 takes courage to press forward alone, self- 

 reliant, misunderstood, at peace only wdth 

 one's own convictions. Did we think of 

 this in Packard's case? Did we look at his 

 Linnean and other honors in this light? 

 Did even our corporation feel that the 

 cause of which it is the supreme guardian, 

 had in Packard been awarded with the most 

 cherished tokens of the world's approval? 



Packard was not lacking in his reverence 

 for art, for literature, for music ; but his 

 soul cried out for science. He felt instinct- 

 ively that the handiwork of man, however 

 sublime, can not be more than human ; and 

 that a finite brain has fashioned all its cul- 

 tures. Nature is the ofi:'spring of omnis- 

 cience. He realized what the world was 

 so slow to realize, what only within the last 

 few hundred years has come like a tumul- 

 tuous awakening, that the universe was 

 wrought in the workshops of God, and that 

 she alone is ultimately divine. He felt too 

 that her true poetry is not written in rhet- 

 oric but in mathematics and in the stern 

 logic of science. For all our natural phi- 

 losophies are but an attempt at a picture. 

 We find no adequate symbols in our efi^orts 

 to restate her methods; our analogies, our 

 metaphors, are gross ; we have to shift, to 

 ajiproximate, to neglect. But nature neg- 



