THE TEXAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
October 12th, 1894. 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE 
ACADEMY, 
DR. GEORGE BRUCE HALSTED. 
ORIGINAL RESEARCH AND CREATIVE AUTHORSHIP THE 
ESSENCE OF UNIVERSITY TEACHING. 
That which is most characteristic of the present epoch in the history 
of man is undoubtedly the vast and beneficent growth of science. 
In things apart from science, other races at times long past may be 
compared to the most civilized people of to-day. 
The lyric poetry of Sappho has never been equaled. The epic flavor 
of Homer, even after translation, comes down to us unsurpassed through 
the ages. 
Dante, the voice of ten silent centuries, may wait ten centuries more 
before his maedieval miracle of song finds its peer. 
The Apollo Belvidere, the Venus of Milo, the Laocoon are the glory 
of antique, the despair of modern sculpture. 
To mention oratory to a schoolboy is to recall Demosthenes, and 
Cicero, even if he has never pictured Caesar, that greatest of the sons 
of men, quelling the mutinous soldiery by his first word, or with out¬ 
stretched arm, in Egypt’s palace window, holding enthralled his raging 
enemies, gaining precious moments, time , the only thing he needed to 
enable him to crush them under his dominant intellect. 
There is no need for multiplying examples. The on j thing that gives 
the present generation its predominance is science. The foremost factor 
in modern life is science. 
All criticisms of the scope of life, of the essence of education, made 
before science had taken its present place, or attempting to ignore its 
prominence, are obsolete, as are of necessity any systems of education 
founded on pre-scientific or anti-scientific conceptions. 
Unfortunately there are still some people so dull, so envious, so un¬ 
scientific, so stupid as to maintain that the highest aim of a university 
should be the training of young men and young women, where they use 
the word “training” in its repressive, inhibitive sense. 
