Annual Address by the President. 
11 
Where both are indispensable, only the cramped mind will seek to 
belittle either. 
Nearly two and a half centuries ago, in 1658, to 'be accurate, 
Boscovich, the great Italian administrator, diplomat and physicist, 
set forth and ably defended the view that atoms are but forces, 
each concentrated in a mathematical point, and held apart by their 
mutual repulsions. The view did not fail of its adherents, number- 
ing among them names as great as that of Faraday. But, even if 
the prejudices of an imaginative race had allowed it a fair hearing, 
which they did not, the state of science was not ripe for the general 
acceptance of the theory. Electricity did not exist for science, and 
countless hours of research had still to be labored through before 
a sufficient weight of experimental facts could be accumulated to 
outbalance our tribal idol, so stiff-necked is an inborn bent of human 
nature. Besides, Boscovich delayed the triumph 'of his theory, in 
its essential principle, in my judgment, by confining his force- 
atoms to mathematical points, and denying them spacial occupancy, 
the fundamental attribute of matter; a course the more to be re- 
gretted, as the denial is unnecessary, indeed contrary to plain ex- 
perience. 
The status of Boscovich’s theory, and its more or less modified 
successors, remained practically unchanged until the end of the 
nineteenth and the marvelous beginning years of the present century, 
a few of the best minds of each generation upholding it, but the large 
majority of physical scientists, including men of unsurpassed 
eminence, according it a neglect more or less contemptuous. But 
these recent years have been bringing about a change. A number 
of physicists of the first rank are aggressively championing the 
dynamic theory of matter, and as each unexpected discovery, hur- 
rying upon the heels of its predecessor, brings support to the theory, 
its opponents seem conscious of engaging in a losing fight. 
Before passing to the chief evidence, I will just mention some ex- 
periments of the Hindu physicist, Dr. Bose, a professor in Cal- 
cutta University, which indicate the trend of much research that is 
now being prosecuted, and indirectly support the dynamic theory, 
by tending to show that metals at least are not dead, but alive, 
bundles of activities like living animals. Dr. Bose’s book, “The 
Response of Matter,” I have not been able to secure; the quotation 
that follows is from a notice of it in the London Review of Re- 
views. Dr. Bose’s discovery is, that stimulated metals give back, 
under proper conditions of observation, the electric response that 
has been thought peculiar to, and characteristic of, organic or living 
