PROCEEDINGS. 
551 
in the spirit of scientific investigation, secure good seats to inspect the 
latest patterns of skirt-dancing and high-kicking in the places where these 
are something of a specialty, but we don’t want them at home. 
The four hundredth meeting. The Society as it is. I hope that each 
member present is serenely confident that this is the best of all possible 
societies, flourishing in the best of all possible worlds. If any one doubt 
it, let him turn to his neighbor and have his doubts removed. I have 
no time to spare to argue this point, and will only congratulate you on 
its present standing among learned societies, its membership, its bank 
account, and its future prospects. This brings me naturally to the third 
head of my discourse, the Society as it is to be. This is mainly a matter 
for the younger members, and I congratulate them on the possibilities 
that are before them. It should be pleasant to them to reflect that the 
older ones have not done what they intended to do when they were 
young—that is, to discover and explain everything, to provide all possible 
formulae, to classify and name all minerals, fossils, and living things. 
Just think what a melancholy earth this would be for you if they had 
done all this, whereas now you can have no end of enjoyment in correct¬ 
ing the errors and supplementing the deficiencies of their work. 
Besant says that “ old people have most of the wealth of the world, and 
they make believe that with the wealth the world itself belongs to them; 
but it is a fond delusion. When the power to fight, to create, to make, is 
gone, the power to enjoy vanishes as well. The old people can creep about 
in their gardens and their houses, can put on robes of authority, can give 
orders to servants, but the round world and all that therein is and is 
worth having belongs, has belonged, and always will belong, to the young.” 
This dictum needs a qualification, viz., that the terms “old” and 
“young” are not to be understood as referring merely to years of life; 
but with that modification it may pass. 
Nevertheless, we, the ancients, feel as deep an interest in the progress 
which is being made and in the prosperity of this Society as we ever did 
when we were busiest in its affairs. 
There are some occasional troubles connected with the process of grow¬ 
ing old, but it is the only way that has yet been discovered of living a 
long time, and there are certain tastes which, once formed, do not decay. 
Many studious men begin to lose somewhat of their receptivity after fifty, 
to be happy in the prospect that there are many things that they need 
not know, and that they may take pleasure in many things which are not 
subjects of logical demonstration. 
“ Happy is the man who has gained a knowledge of the causes of things 
and trampled all fear under foot and risen above relentless fate and the 
hungry clamor of death. Yet not less blest is he who knows the rustic 
gods, even Pan, and old Silvanus and the sister nymphs.”— Virgil . 
But he who has once tasted the pleasures of original observation and 
research never loses his memory of them. When circumstances compel 
him to put them aside he can appreciate the explorer’s restlessness after 
a period of quiet—the “prairie thirst”—the “India thirst” of which 
