THE TEXAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
[ANNUAL ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT.] 
THE AESTHETIC ELEMENT IN SCIENTIFIC 
THOUGHT. 
DR. THOS. H. MONTGOMERY, JR.* 
It has been our custom in the presidential addresses to present 
more general subjects, and to try to keep out of the ruts of our 
accustomed paths. This is a matter of some difficulty, at least to 
some of us, because we fear to climb lest we should fall. But brav- 
ing this danger, and offering my vulnerability to several points of 
attack, I would bring to your consideration an element in scientific 
thought that seems to have generally escaped appreciation; at least 
I know of no writing where it has been mentioned. 
And I would ask you to consider it particularly in the case of 
naturalists, because that is the type of mind with which I happen 
to be most conversant. We may include under the good old name 
naturalist all such as deal with the living in Nature, all those who 
have been variously termed natural scientists, natural philosophers, 
psychologists, biologists. Many new names are often a burden and 
the minute subdivisions of the paths of learning are of significance 
but to those whose minds are too narrow to embrace more than a 
single road. 
We should define Science as learning, in which men seek for 
interpretations of phenomena without any ulterior motive except 
the pleasure of the work itself and the hope of discovery. Hopes 
of pecuniary emolument can not, accordingly, be the directives to- 
wards a scientific calling, the influences must be of quite a different 
kind. The world naturally judges like the small boy who with 
open-mouthed curiosity watches the naturalist afield in his work of 
collecting, then examining the specimens, asks, “Are they good to 
eat? How much are you paid for them?” But what the naturalist 
seeks, interpretations, he can use directly neither to still his bodily 
hunger nor for monetary gain. 
Then it may be supposed that scientists carry out their labors 
primarily with a view to recognition, to fame, that this and not the 
^Professor of Zoology, University of Texas. 
