694 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
mental than the beginning of a concerted endeavor to search out 
rigorously, to test and to make known the basal truths that condi¬ 
tioned the lives of the Wisconsin people:—our habitat, the native life 
of the land, our material inheritances, our climatic and other physical 
surroundings, our social and moral conditions, our political institu¬ 
tions, as well as the arts and the literatures that made it possible 
to use these most effectually. I do not think that the partiality of 
the occasion leads us beyond the realities, when we regard the found¬ 
ing of the Academy as at least the most representative step in this 
new development. It was of course by no means the only step, nor 
was it the pioneer step in the transition from primitive conditions to 
the more mature civilization to which the state has since attained; 
for, in addition to the effective work of the schools and the churches, 
which had taken on broader aspects and become more efficient as the 
passing of primitive conditions permitted, the State Historical So¬ 
ciety, the State Agricultural Society, the State Teachers’ Association, 
and other organizations had already taken up their special tasks and 
had become effective agencies of progress; but, none the less, the 
founding of the Academy was the most representative event in the 
turn to the new order of things, for, better than any other single 
event, it typified the coming of a higher order of endeavor, in that 
its distinctive feature was cooperative research for the common good, 
and this, I think you will agree, is the most basal and truest index 
of real progress. 
The movement furthermore was a comprehensive one, and altru¬ 
istic; it was unrelated to special interests. It was entered upon 
spontaneously in full realization of the sacrificial labors that 
would be necessary to make the enterprise a real success. And so, 
in its high purpose and in its sacrificial spirit, this coming together, 
fifty years ago, of good men from all parts of the state to found an 
Academy whose chief purpose was to facilitate a concerted search 
for truth for the common good, stands forth as an altogether signal 
event in the intellectual development of our people. 
The Pioneer Preparatory Stage 
But before we pass on to review with gratitude and appreciation 
the work of the founders of the Academy, let us pay a passing word 
of respect to the pioneers who paved the way for the later era. Let 
us also not altogether pass in silence the native conditions which be¬ 
came our inheritance and which contributed more than perhaps we 
realize to what Wisconsin now is and is likely to be. 
To one who saw the primitive wildness of this region as it was 
vanishing and who played his little part in the early struggle to re¬ 
place the unbroken sod with cultivated land, it is a pleasure to recall 
this early epoch and all that it meant to the founders of the state. 
The primitive wildness had a charm which no one who saw it can 
easily forget, and the struggle with this wildness, strenuous as it was, 
had in it such an imperative call for personal resourcefulness and 
