Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/762

742 with one another, and with foreign philosophers; to obtain a more general attention to the objects of science, and the removal of any disadvantages of a public kind which impede its progress."

Two classes of institutions for the promotion of science, having the same general object, but working by different methods, were thus in operation in Europe when the question arose of forming a scientific association in this country. But the circumstances were so different here as to occasion perplexity at the outset in regard to its plan. In England, France, and Germany, there are old institutions of high character, like the Royal Society, the French Academy, and the leading universities, which carry out a stringent system of discriminations in regard to the claims and position of scientific men, and whose honors are so difficult of attainment that they become passports of character throughout the world. There were no such venerated and authoritative establishments in this country; and, when it was contemplated to enter upon the organization of a prominent and permanent society for the promotion of science, there were grave apprehensions that, in the absence of established tests, such a body would be inundated with inferior and incompetent men who would degrade its standards, impede its true work, and, perhaps, pervert it to unworthy objects.

The Association of American Geologists and Naturalists was established about 1840, ten years after the British Association. The geological surveys undertaken by the different States rendered meetings of those engaged in them very necessary, for comparisons, discussions, systematic effort, and the attempt at some common basis of geological classification. Very naturally it was a society of working men—of actual investigators—and aimed at objects which belonged to the province of original inquiry. In 1848 this society was reconstructed, and merged in a new organization called the American Association for the Advancement of Science, its first meeting being held in Philadelphia, under the presidency of William C, Redfield, Esq. In this change the original society was widened in its scope, and conformed to the general plan of the British Association. Its objects are thus stated in the constitution: "The objects of the Association are, by periodical and migratory meetings, to promote intercourse between those who are cultivating science in different parts of the United States; to give a stronger and more general impulse and a more systematic direction to scientific research in our country; and to procure for the labors of scientific men increased facilities and a wider usefulness."

In comparing the statements of the objects of the two Associations, it will be seen that they are in certain respects identical, the English phraseology being adopted by the founders of the American Association to indicate its purposes. But the American organization, in the presentation of its objects, omitted an essential feature of the English, confining itself quite strictly to the promotion of the interests of scientific men as investigators, and omitting the English phrase, "to obtain a more general attention to the objects of science, and a removal of any disadvantages of a public kind which impede its progress." In a land preëminently of popular institutions, the new organization was less popular, in aim and spirit, than its foreign prototype—an anomaly which finds its explanation, as we have seen, in the circumstances under which American scientific men were laboring.

How early this feeling was entertained, and how serious were the apprehensions to which it gave rise, are well attested by the following passage from the address of Prof Bache before the Association at Albany in 1851. No man could speak with more authority, as he was among its