IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
19 
In the inductive sciences that deal with facts of most 
obvious bearings we are magnifjiing the importance of isolated 
details and largely ignoring the idea of relationship. As long 
as people fail to understand that nothing is superior to law, so 
long may we expect the search for perpetual motion, the elixir 
of life and the fabled pot of gold. Metaphysicians tell us that 
the idea of cause is intuitive, yet vast numbers of people act as 
though cause and effect had no relations whatever in some 
realms of human experience. The extraordinary success 
attained by many investigators and inventors has produced 
a widespread notion that these successful ones are creators 
rather than discoverers, and that their genius (so-called) tran- 
scends common laws. The spirit of speculation so rife in soci- 
ety at present seems to subsist largely on the idea that the 
common laws of experience are often inoperative. Can we 
wonder at the enormous sales of patent nostrums as long as 
there is a widespread opinion that medical science has no 
rational basis? Can we wonder at the successful impositions 
of faith-healers and medicine- men when each holder of a phy- 
sician's diploma is considered a law unto himself, entitled to 
experiment at his own sweet will on suffering humanity? Is it 
strange that people fail to be guided by reason when the mate- 
rials of experience are like so much wind-blown chaff? Says 
the worldly-wise man of to-day: “My son, be a freak, an hon- 
est freak if convenient, but by all means be a freak, for in 
freak-ism is success.” 
I therefore make no apology for presuming to make a plea 
for scientific thought. We may indeed be proud of our achieve- 
ments in science. In this, the latter part of the nineteenth 
century, the age of Edison, Pasteur and a host of other inves- 
tigators, we need make no defense of the position science occu- 
pies in human thought and action. The air ship, the electric 
engine, the dynamite gun, are but faint indications of what is 
yet to be accomplished. The triumphs of surgical skill are j ust 
begun. We see the forces of nature arrayed against each other 
to give a purer atmosphere, a richer soil, a freer life to mankind. 
Material considerations outweigh all others in the arena of 
public opinion. Some say the world has gone mad with science. 
Scientific studies have crowded themselves into the public 
schools, colleges and universities in spite of the opposition of 
the classics. The children lisp in scientific phrases, and the 
old men sigh lor the good old times when ignorance was bliss. 
