Annual Address by the President. 
7 
in a combination of legendary folk-lore and religious superstition. 
Often these pioneer curious minds were really braver that we moderns, 
for they sedulously collected all objects that they could not under- 
stand, while we are too frequently accustomed to circumvent • the 
inexplicable. 
Curiosity in the child is an inclination towards what he deems 
beautiful, as well as towards what he considers mysterious. With 
this discrimination of the beautiful comes the desire to possess it; 
therefrom the wish to collect, and finally out of that the habit of 
comparison. Perhaps a child is born without fear, but he soon 
learns to associate a sense of fear with the mysterious, as with the 
darkness and the thunder. lie is drawn towards this mysterious 
that he can not understand, and peoples it with imaginary terrors. 
He has a distinct attraction, however subdued and hard to understand 
though it be, in the mysterious that he fears, just as early races 
came first to supplicate then to praise what terrified them. Accord- 
ing as the open expression of delight in the beautiful that he does 
not fear predominates or does not predominate over the sense of 
the mysterious that he does fear, the child may be open to external 
impressions and vivacious, or be more dreamy and subject to mus- 
ings. But in either case his liking for a thing is an expression of his 
attraction for the beautiful or mysterious. 
Now what is it that keeps the mature scientific mind interestedly 
occupied in complex studies? The work itself is trying, it brings 
out the gray hairs and developes the scholar’s stoop. Yet scien- 
tific men who are usually occupied in arduous teaching through 
three-quarters of the year fill up all possible intervals of time in 
their summer vacations with their own studies, and are apt to con- 
sider the duties of the teacher an infringment upon their proper 
work. Indeed one who maintains that teaching is sufficient appli- 
cation, should not be called scientific because he is not aiding in 
the increase of knowledge but only in its transmission. 
One attribute noticeable among scientists is a feeling of affection 
as well as of veneration for the objects of their examination. This 
has bqen particularly the case with the greater naturalists, the 
masters of interpretation. It is the note of childhood that keeps them 
from growing old. Here and there is one who is more cold-blooded 
towards the object of his studies, more impersonal to it, working as 
we say without feeling of heart. But among, the truly great of all 
generations, if not among those of smaller gauge and weaker in- 
tellect, there is found a chord of harmony with the object, a real love 
for the thing investigated, and this quite apart from the rational in- 
terpretation. Caressingly the anatomist guards and hoards his col- 
