Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/534

524 of science in all the neighboring provinces with which we have been able hitherto to maintain only rather strained diplomatic relations.

Still more immediately important to us are the evidences of progress manifested in recent years by this Association and by its affiliated societies. Our parent organization, though a half century old, is still young as regards the extent in time of the functions it has undertaken to perform. It has accomplished a great work; but in the vigor and enthusiasm of its youth a far greater work is easily attainable. Exactly how these functions are to be developed, no man can foresee. We may learn, however, in this, as in other lines of research, by methods with which we are well acquainted, namely, by the methods of carefully planned and patiently executed observation and experiment. The field for energetic and painstaking effort is wider and more attractive than ever before. Science is now truly cosmopolitan; it can be limited by no close corporations; and no domain of scientific investigation can be advantageously fenced off, either in time or in space, from the rest. While every active worker of this or of any affiliated society is, in a sense, a specialist, there are occasions when he should unite with his colleagues for the promotion of the interests of science as a whole. The results of the specialists need to be popularized and to be disseminated among the people at large. The advance of knowledge, to be effective with the masses of our race, must be sustained on its merits by a popular verdict. To bring the diverse scientific activities of the American Continent into harmony for common needs; to secure cooperation for common purposes; and to disseminate the results of scientific investigation among our fellow-men, are not less, but rather much more, than in the past, the privilege and the duty of The American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Viewed, then, in its broader aspects, the progress of science is involved in the general progress of our race; and those who are interested in promoting the former should be equally earnest in securing the latter. However much we may be absorbed in the details of our specialties, when we stop to think of science in its entirety, we are led, in the last analysis, back to'he problem of problems—the meaning of the universe. All men gifted with the sad endowment of a contemplative mind' must recur again and again to this riddle of the centuries. We are, so to speak, whatever our prepossessions, all sailing in the same boat on an unknown sea for a destination at best not fully determined. Some there are who have, or think they have, the Pole Star always in sight. Others, though less confident of their bearings, are willing to assume nothing short of second place in the conduct of the ship. Others, still less confident of their bearings, are disposed to depend chiefly on their knowledge of the compass and on their skill in dead reckoning. We of the last class may not impugn the motives or doubt the sincerity