Annual Address op the President. 7 
Now the highest attribute, the distinguishing feature, of a science is 
its ability to predict from the certain known data what will come about 
in the future. This gift of prophecy the physical sciences undoubtedly 
possess. Where a given planet will be fifty years hence can be calculated 
with accuracy; what reaction will take place when we mix certain sub- 
stances can be determined; we traffic in electricity and measure it as 
accurately as any material commodity — all these sciences have reached 
the mathematical stage, and the yardstick, chronometer, and balance can 
be used to measure all the determining elements. Certain forms of 
zoology even are making strenuous efforts to take on this phase of math- 
ematical exactitude. But when we come to the human individual with 
his limitless capacity for folly or wisdom, or, granted that he is the 
slave of his environment, when we consider the almost limitless com- 
plexity of the elements that determine his choice in any particular 
juncture, we stand appalled at the difficulty of the question before us. 
If we assume that society as the totality of individuals is equal to the 
sum of its ]3arts, we are impotent before the complexity of the single 
element. 
How shall we integrate elements so heterogeneous? so obscurely com- 
plex and intricate? When we consider, moreover, the comparative sim- 
plicity of the problems of the chemist and phycist, how insoluble still 
appear most of the enigmas presented for their consideration, how com- 
plicated the explanation of even the activities implying merely matter 
and energy are becoming with our widening horizon, the mere possibility 
of a science of society in the exact sense, dealing is it does with materials 
infinitely more complex, becomes a matter of serious doubt. It is not a 
question of framing a mere general hypothesis; it is a very different 
thing to say that the protoplastic slime of forgotten centuries has de- 
veloped under purely natural laws into the varied forms of life that we 
now know, and to say that we can intelligently account for all these 
changes and formulate their laws. On the other hand no one is so opti- 
mistic as to hope for a solution of the problems thus proposed. The 
division into separate sciences is a tacit confession that no such solution 
is expected, and may be regarded as an attempt to simplify the problem 
by considering only certain aspects of one too general; but even these 
separate sciences, though they contemplate only a survey of a limited 
field of the problem, have to face the same fundamental difficulties. It 
is for these reasons that I think we must admit that starting with the 
individual human atom, even though he may epitomize in his own proper 
person all the past and future of his race, we can arrive at no effective 
theory as to the past or future structure of human society. 
The question then arises as to what hypotheses will prove useful in 
describing the phenomena, often simple enough, which the history of 
