Astronomy is more intimately connected than any other science with the history of mankind. While chemistry, physics, and we might say all sciences which pertain to things on the earth, are comparatively modern, we find that contemplative men engaged in the study of the celestial motions even before the commencement of authentic history. The earliest navigators of whom we know must have been aware that the earth was round. This fact was certainly understood by the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, as well as it is at the present day. True, they did not know that the earth revolved on its axis, but thought that the heavens and all that in them is performed a daily revolution around our globe, which was, therefore, the centre of the universe. It was the cynosure, or constellation of the Little Bear, by which the sailors used to guide their ships before the discovery of the mariner's compass. Thus we see both a practical and contemplative side to astronomy through all history. The world owes two debts to that science: one for its practical uses, and the other for the ideas it has afforded us of the immensity of creation.
The practical uses of astronomy are of two kinds: One relates to geography; the other to times, seasons, and chronology. Every navigator who sails long out of sight of land must be something of an astronomer. His compass tells him where are east, west, north, and south, but it gives him no information as to where on the wide ocean he may be, or whither the currents may be carrying him. Even with the swiftest modern steamers it is not safe to trust to the compass in crossing the Atlantic. A number of years ago the steamer City of Washington set out on her usual voyage from Liverpool to New York. By rare bad luck the weather was stormy or cloudy during her whole passage, so that the captain could not get a sight on the sun, and therefore had to trust to his compass and his log-line, the former telling him in what direction he had steamed, and the latter how fast he was going each hour. The result was that the ship ran ashore on the coast of Nova Scotia, when the captain thought he was approaching Nantucket.
Not only the navigator but the surveyor in the western wilds must depend on astronomical observations to learn his exact position on the earth's surface, or the latitude and longitude of the camp which he occupies. He is able to do this because the earth is round, and the direction of the plumb-line not exactly the same at any two places. Let us suppose that the earth stood still, so as not to revolve on its axis at all. Then we should always see the stars at rest and the star which was in the zenith of any place, say a farm-house in New York, at any time, would be there every night and every hour of the year. Now the zenith is simply the point from which the plumb-line seems to drop. Lie on the ground; hang a plummet above your head, sight on the line with one eye, and the direction of the sight will be the zenith of your place. Suppose the earth was still, and a certain star was at your zenith. Then if you went to another place a mile away, the direction of the plumb-line would be slightly different. The change would, indeed, be very small, so small that you could not detect it by sighting with the plumb-line. But astronomers and surveyors have vastly more accurate instruments than the plumb-line and the eye, instruments by which a deviation that the unaided eye could not detect can be seen and measured. Instead of the plumb-line they use a spirit-level or a basin of quicksilver. The surface of quicksilver is exactly level and so at right angles to the true direction of the plumb-line or the force of gravity. Its direction is therefore a little different at two different places on the surface, and the change can be measured by its effect on the apparent direction of a star seen by reflection from the surface.
It is true that a considerable distance on the earth's surface will seem very small in its effect on the position of a star. Suppose there were two stars in the heavens, the one in the zenith of the place where you now stand, and the other in the zenith of a place a mile away. To the best eye unaided by a telescope those two stars would look like a single one. But let the two places be five miles apart, and the eye could see that there were two of them. A good telescope could distinguish between two stars corresponding to places not more than a hundred feet apart. The most exact measurements can determine distances ranging from thirty to sixty feet. If a skilful astronomical observer should mount a telescope on your premises, and determine his latitude by observations on two or three evenings, and then you should try to trick him by taking up the instrument and putting it at another point one hundred feet north or south, he would find out that something was wrong by a single night's work.
Within the past three years a wobbling of the earth's axis has been discovered, which takes place within a circle thirty feet in radius and sixty feet in diameter. Its effect was noticed in astronomical observations many years ago, but the change it produced was so small that men could not find out what the matter was. The exact nature and amount of the wobbling is a work of the exact astronomy of the present time.
We cannot measure across oceans from island to island. Until a recent time we have not even measured across the continent, from New York to San Francisco, in the most precise way. Without astronomy we should know nothing of the distance between New York and Liverpool, except by the time which it took steamers to run it, a measure which would be very uncertain indeed. But by the aid of astronomical observations and the Atlantic cables the distance is found within a few hundred yards. Without astronomy we could scarcely make an accurate map of the United States, except at enormous labor and expense, and even then we could not be sure of its correctness. But the practical astronomer being able to determine his latitude and longitude within fifty yards, the positions of the principal points in all great cities of the country are known, and can be laid down on maps.
The world has always had to depend on astronomy for all its knowledge concerning times and seasons. The changes of the moon gave us the first month, and the year completes its round as the earth travels in its orbit. The results of astronomical observation are for us condensed into almanacs, which are now in such universal use that we never think of their astronomical origin. But in ancient times people had no almanacs, and they learned the time of year, or the number of days in the year, by observing the time when Sirius or some other bright star rose or set with the sun, or disappeared from view in the sun's rays. At Alexandria, in Egypt, the length of the year was determined yet more exactly by observing when the sun rose exactly in the east and set exactly in the west, a date which fixed the equinox for them as for us. More than seventeen hundred years ago, Ptolemy, the great author of The Almagest, had fixed the length of the year to within a very few minutes. He knew it was a little less than 365 1/2 days. The dates of events in ancient history depend very largely on the chronological cycles of astronomy. Eclipses of the sun and moon sometimes fixed the date of great events, and we learn the relation of ancient calendars to our own through the motions of the earth and moon, and can thus measure out the years for the events in ancient history on the same scale that we measure out our own.
At the present day, the work of the practical astronomer is made use of in our daily life throughout the whole country in yet another way. Our fore-fathers had to regulate their clocks by a sundial, or perhaps by a mark at the corner of the house, which showed where the shadow of the house fell at noon. Very rude indeed was this method; and it was uncertain for another reason. It is not always exactly twenty-four hours between two noons by the sun, Sometimes for two or three months the sun will make it noon earlier and earlier every day; and during several other months later and later every day. The result is that, if a clock is perfectly regulated, the sun will be sometimes a quarter of an hour behind it, and sometimes nearly the same amount before it. Any effort to keep the clock in accord with this changing sun was in vain, and so the time of day was always uncertain.
Now, however, at some of the principal observatories of the country astronomical observations are made on every clear night for the express purpose of regulating an astronomical clock with the greatest exactness. Every day at noon a signal is sent to various parts of the country by telegraph, so that all operators and railway men who hear that signal can set their clock at noon within two or three seconds. People who live near railway stations can thus get their time from it, and so exact time is diffused into every household of the land which is at all near a railway station, without the trouble of watching the sun. Thus increased exactness is given to the time on all our railroads, increased safety is obtained, and great loss of time saved to every one. If we estimated the money value of this saving alone we should no doubt find it to be greater than all that our study of astronomy costs.
It must therefore be conceded that, on the whole, astronomy is a science of more practical use than one would at first suppose. To the thoughtless man, the stars seem to have very little relation to his daily life; they might be forever hid from view without his being the worse for it. He wonders what object men can have in devoting themselves to the study of the motions or phenomena of the heavens. But the more he looks into the subject, and the wider the range which his studies include, the more he will be impressed with the great practical usefulness of the science of the heavens. And yet I think it would be a serious error to say that the world's greatest debt to astronomy was owing to its usefulness in surveying, navigation, and chronology. The more enlightened a man is, the more he will feel that what makes his mind what it is, and gives him the ideas of himself and creation which he possesses, is more important than that which gains him wealth. I therefore hold that the world's greatest debt to astronomy is that it has taught us what a great thing creation is, and what an insignificant part of the Creator's work is this earth on which we dwell, and everything that is upon it. That space is infinite, that wherever we go there is a farther still beyond it, must have been accepted as a fact by all men who have thought of the subject since men began to think at all. But it is very curious how hard even the astronomers found it to believe that creation is as large as we now know it to be. The Greeks had their gods on or not very far above Olympus, which was a sort of footstool to the heavens. Sometimes they tried to guess how far it probably was from the vault of heaven to the earth, and they had a myth as to the time it took Vulcan to fall. Ptolemy knew that the moon was about thirty diameters of the earth distant from us, and he knew that the sun was many times farther than the moon; he thought it about twenty times as far, but could not be sure. We know that it is nearly four hundred times as far.
When Copernicus propounded the theory that the earth moved around the sun, and not the sun around the earth, he was able to fix the relative distances of the several planets, and thus make a map of the solar system. But he knew nothing about the scale of this map. He knew, for example, that Venus was a little more than two-thirds the distance of the earth from the sun, and that Mars was about half as far again as the earth, Jupiter about five times, and Saturn about ten times; but he knew nothing about the distance of any one of them from the sun. He had his map all right, but he could not give any scale of miles or any other measurements upon it. The astronomers who first succeeded him found that the distance was very much greater than had formerly been supposed; that it was, in fact, for them immeasurably great, and that was all they could say about it.
The proofs which Copernicus gave that the earth revolved around the sun were so strong that none could well doubt them. And yet there was a difficulty in accepting the theory which seemed insuperable. If the earth really moved in so immense an orbit as it must, then the stars would seem to move in the opposite direction, just as, if you were in a train that is shunting off cars one after another, as the train moves back and forth you see its motion in the opposite motion of every object around you. If then the earth at one side of its orbit was exactly between two stars, when it moved to the other side of its orbit it would not be in a line between them, but each star would have seemed to move in the opposite direction.
For centuries astronomers made the most exact observations that they were able without having succeeded in detecting any such apparent motion among the stars. Here was a mystery which they could not solve. Either the Copernican system was not true, after all, and the earth did not move in an orbit, or the stars were at such immense distances that the whole immeasurable orbit of the earth is a mere point in comparison. Philosophers could not believe that the Creator would waste room by allowing the inconceivable spaces which appeared to lie between our system and the fixed stars to remain unused, and so thought there must be something wrong in the theory of the earth's motion.
Not until the nineteenth century was well in progress did the most skilful observers of their time, Bessel and Struve, having at command the most refined instruments which science was then able to devise, discover the reality of the parallax of the stars, and show that the nearest of these bodies which they could find was more than 400,000 times as far as the 93,000,000 of miles which separate the earth from the sun. During the half-century and more which has elapsed since this discovery, astronomers have been busily engaged in fathoming the heavenly depths. The nearest star they have been able to find is about 280,000 times the sun's distance. A dozen or a score more are within 1,000,000 times that distance. Beyond this all is unfathomable by any sounding-line yet known to man.
The results of these astronomical measures are stupendous beyond conception. No mere statement in numbers conveys any idea of it. Nearly all the brighter stars are known to be flying through space at speeds which generally range between ten and forty or fifty miles per second, some slower and some swifter, even up to one or two hundred miles a second. Such a speed would carry us across the Atlantic while we were reading two or three of these sentences. These motions take place some in one direction and some in another. Some of the stars are coming almost straight towards us. Should they reach us, and pass through our solar system, the result would be destructive to our earth, and perhaps to our sun.
Are we in any danger? No, because, however madly they may come, whether ten, twenty, or one hundred miles per second, so many millions of years must elapse before they reach us that we need give ourselves no concern in the matter. Probably none of them are coming straight to us; their course deviates just a hair's-breadth from our system, but that hair's-breadth is so large a quantity that when the millions of years elapse their course will lie on one side or the other of our system and they will do no harm to our planet; just as a bullet fired at an insect a mile away would be nearly sure to miss it in one direction or the other.
Our instrument makers have constructed telescopes more and more powerful, and with these the whole number of stars visible is carried up into the millions, say perhaps to fifty or one hundred millions. For aught we know every one of those stars may have planets like our own circling round it, and these planets may be inhabited by beings equal to ourselves. To suppose that our globe is the only one thus inhabited is something so unlikely that no one could expect it. It would be very nice to know something about the people who may inhabit these bodies, but we must await our translation to another sphere before we can know anything on the subject. Meanwhile, we have gained what is of more value than gold or silver; we have learned that creation transcends all our conceptions, and our ideas of its Author are enlarged accordingly.
There are few men with whom I would like so well to have a quiet talk as with Father Hell. I have known more important and more interesting men, but none whose acquaintance has afforded me a serener satisfaction, or imbued me with an ampler measure of a feeling that I am candid enough to call self-complacency. The ties that bind us are peculiar. When I call him my friend, I do not mean that we ever hobnobbed together. But if we are in sympathy, what matters it that he was dead long before I was born, that he lived in one century and I in another? Such differences of generation count for little in the brotherhood of astronomy, the work of whose members so extends through all time that one might well forget that he belongs to one century or to another.
Father Hell was an astronomer. Ask not whether he was a very great one, for in our science we have no infallible gauge by which we try men and measure their stature. He was a lover of science and an indefatigable worker, and he did what in him lay to advance our knowledge of the stars. Let that suffice. I love to fancy that in some other sphere, either within this universe of ours or outside of it, all who have successfully done this may some time gather and exchange greetings. Should this come about there will be a few—Hipparchus and Ptolemy, Copernicus and Newton, Galileo and Herschel—to be surrounded by admiring crowds. But these men will have as warm a grasp and as kind a word for the humblest of their followers, who has merely discovered a comet or catalogued a nebula, as for the more brilliant of their brethren.
My friend wrote the letters S. J. after his name. This would indicate that he had views and tastes which, in some points, were very different from my own. But such differences mark no dividing line in the brotherhood of astronomy. My testimony would count for nothing were I called as witness for the prosecution in a case against the order to which my friend belonged. The record would be very short: Deponent saith that he has at various times known sundry members of the said order; and that they were lovers of sound learning, devoted to the discovery and propagation of knowledge; and further deponent saith not.
If it be true that an undevout astronomer is mad, then was Father Hell the sanest of men. In his diary we find entries like these: "Benedicente Deo, I observed the Sun on the meridian to-day.... Deo quoque benedicente, I to-day got corresponding altitudes of the Sun's upper limb." How he maintained the simplicity of his faith in the true spirit of the modern investigator is shown by his proceedings during a momentous voyage along the coast of Norway, of which I shall presently speak. He and his party were passengers on a Norwegian vessel. For twelve consecutive days they had been driven about by adverse storms, threatened with shipwreck on stony cliffs, and finally compelled to take refuge in a little bay, with another ship bound in the same direction, there to wait for better weather.
Father Hell was philosopher enough to know that unusual events do not happen without cause. Perhaps he would have undergone a week of storm without its occurring to him to investigate the cause of such a bad spell of weather. But when he found the second week approaching its end and yet no sign of the sun appearing or the wind abating, he was satisfied that something must be wrong. So he went to work in the spirit of the modern physician who, when there is a sudden outbreak of typhoid fever, looks at the wells and examines their water with the microscope to find the microbes that must be lurking somewhere. He looked about, and made careful inquiries to find what wickedness captain and crew had been guilty of to bring such a punishment. Success soon rewarded his efforts. The King of Denmark had issued a regulation that no fish or oil should be sold along the coast except by the regular dealers in those articles. And the vessel had on board contraband fish and blubber, to be disposed of in violation of this law.
The astronomer took immediate and energetic measures to insure the public safety. He called the crew together, admonished them of their sin, the suffering they were bringing on themselves, and the necessity of getting back to their families. He exhorted them to throw the fish overboard, as the only measure to secure their safety. In the goodness of his heart, he even offered to pay the value of the jettison as soon as the vessel reached Drontheim.
But the descendants of the Vikings were stupid and unenlightened men—"educatione sua et professione homines crassissimi"—and would not swallow the medicine so generously offered. They claimed that, as they had bought the fish from the Russians, their proceedings were quite lawful. As for being paid to throw the fish overboard, they must have spot cash in advance or they would not do it.
After further fruitless conferences, Father Hell determined to escape the danger by transferring his party to the other vessel. They had not more than got away from the wicked crew than Heaven began to smile on their act—"factum comprobare Deus ipse videtur"—the clouds cleared away, the storm ceased to rage, and they made their voyage to Copenhagen under sunny skies. I regret to say that the narrative is silent as to the measure of storm subsequently awarded to the homines crassissimi of the forsaken vessel.
For more than a century Father Hell had been a well-known figure in astronomical history. His celebrity was not, however, of such a kind as the Royal Astronomer of Austria that he was ought to enjoy. A not unimportant element in his fame was a suspicion of his being a black sheep in the astronomical flock. He got under this cloud through engaging in a trying and worthy enterprise. On June 3, 1769, an event occurred which had for generations been anticipated with the greatest interest by the whole astronomical world. This was a transit of Venus over the disk of the sun. Our readers doubtless know that at that time such a transit afforded the most accurate method known of determining the distance of the earth from the sun. To attain this object, parties were sent to the most widely separated parts of the globe, not only over wide stretches of longitude, but as near as possible to the two poles of the earth. One of the most favorable and important regions of observation was Lapland, and the King of Denmark, to whom that country then belonged, interested himself in getting a party sent thither. After a careful survey of the field he selected Father Hell, Chief of the Observatory at Vienna, and well known as editor and publisher of an annual ephemeris, in which the movements and aspects of the heavenly bodies were predicted. The astronomer accepted the mission and undertook what was at that time a rather hazardous voyage. His station was at Vardo in the region of the North Cape. What made it most advantageous for the purpose was its being situated several degrees within the Arctic Circle, so that on the date of the transit the sun did not set. The transit began when the sun was still two or three hours from his midnight goal, and it ended nearly an equal time afterwards. The party consisted of Hell himself, his friend and associate, Father Sajnovics, one Dominus Borgrewing, of whom history, so far as I know, says nothing more, and an humble individual who in the record receives no other designation than "Familias." This implies, we may suppose, that he pitched the tent and made the coffee. If he did nothing but this we might pass him over in silence. But we learn that on the day of the transit he stood at the clock and counted the all-important seconds while the observations were going on.
The party was favored by cloudless weather, and made the required observations with entire success. They returned to Copenhagen, and there Father Hell remained to edit and publish his work. Astronomers were naturally anxious to get the results, and showed some impatience when it became known that Hell refused to announce them until they were all reduced and printed in proper form under the auspices of his royal patron. While waiting, the story got abroad that he was delaying the work until he got the results of observations made elsewhere, in order to "doctor" his own and make them fit in with the others. One went so far as to express a suspicion that Hell had not seen the transit at all, owing to clouds, and that what he pretended to publish were pure fabrications. But his book came out in a few months in such good form that this suspicion was evidently groundless. Still, the fears that the observations were not genuine were not wholly allayed, and the results derived from them were, in consequence, subject to some doubt. Hell himself considered the reflections upon his integrity too contemptible to merit a serious reply. It is said that he wrote to some one offering to exhibit his journal free from interlineations or erasures, but it does not appear that there is any sound authority for this statement. What is of some interest is that he published a determination of the parallax of the sun based on the comparison of his own observations with those made at other stations. The result was 8".70. It was then, and long after, supposed that the actual value of the parallax was about 8".50, and the deviation of Hell's result from this was considered to strengthen the doubt as to the correctness of his work. It is of interest to learn that, by the most recent researches, the number in question must be between 8".75 and 8".80, so that in reality Hell's computations came nearer the truth than those generally current during the century following his work.
Thus the matter stood for sixty years after the transit, and for a generation after Father Hell had gone to his rest. About 1830 it was found that the original journal of his voyage, containing the record of his work as first written down at the station, was still preserved at the Vienna Observatory. Littrow, then an astronomer at Vienna, made a critical examination of this record in order to determine whether it had been tampered with. His conclusions were published in a little book giving a transcript of the journal, a facsimile of the most important entries, and a very critical description of the supposed alterations made in them. He reported in substance that the original record had been so tampered with that it was impossible to decide whether the observations as published were genuine or not. The vital figures, those which told the times when Venus entered upon the sun, had been erased, and rewritten with blacker ink. This might well have been done after the party returned to Copenhagen. The case against the observer seemed so well made out that professors of astronomy gave their hearers a lesson in the value of truthfulness, by telling them how Father Hell had destroyed what might have been very good observations by trying to make them appear better than they really were.
In 1883 I paid a visit to Vienna for the purpose of examining the great telescope which had just been mounted in the observatory there by Grubb, of Dublin. The weather was so unfavorable that it was necessary to remain two weeks, waiting for an opportunity to see the stars. One evening I visited the theatre to see Edwin Booth, in his celebrated tour over the Continent, play King Lear to the applauding Viennese. But evening amusements cannot be utilized to kill time during the day. Among the works I had projected was that of rediscussing all the observations made on the transits of Venus which had occurred in 1761 and 1769, by the light of modern discovery. As I have already remarked, Hell's observations were among the most important made, if they were only genuine. So, during my almost daily visits to the observatory, I asked permission of the director to study Hell's manuscript, which was deposited in the library of the institution. Permission was freely given, and for some days I pored over the manuscript. It is a very common experience in scientific research that a subject which seems very unpromising when first examined may be found more and more interesting as one looks further into it. Such was the case here. For some time there did not seem any possibility of deciding the question whether the record was genuine. But every time I looked at it some new point came to light. I compared the pages with Littrow's published description and was struck by a seeming want of precision, especially when he spoke of the ink with which the record had been made. Erasers were doubtless unknown in those days—at least our astronomer had none on his expedition—so when he found he had written the wrong word he simply wiped the place off with, perhaps, his finger and wrote what he wanted to say. In such a case Littrow described the matter as erased and new matter written. When the ink flowed freely from the quill pen it was a little dark. Then Littrow said a different kind of ink had been used, probably after he had got back from his journey. On the other hand, there was a very singular case in which there had been a subsequent interlineation in ink of quite a different tint, which Littrow said nothing about. This seemed so curious that I wrote in my notes as follows:
"That Littrow, in arraying his proofs of Hell's forgery, should have failed to dwell upon the obvious difference between this ink and that with which the alterations were made leads me to suspect a defect in his sense of color."
The more I studied the description and the manuscript the stronger this impression became. Then it occurred to me to inquire whether perhaps such could have been the case. So I asked Director Weiss whether anything was known as to the normal character of Littrow's power of distinguishing colors. His answer was prompt and decisive. "Oh yes, Littrow was color-blind to red. He could not distinguish between the color of Aldebaran and the whitest star." No further research was necessary. For half a century the astronomical world had based an impression on the innocent but mistaken evidence of a color-blind man—respecting the tints of ink in a manuscript.
It has doubtless happened more than once that when an intimate friend has suddenly and unexpectedly passed away, the reader has ardently wished that it were possible to whisper just one word of appreciation across the dark abyss. And so it is that I have ever since felt that I would like greatly to tell Father Hell the story of my work at Vienna in 1883.
[Footnote: Presidential address at the opening of the International Congress of Arts and Science, St. Louis Exposition, September 21: 1904.]
As we look at the assemblage gathered in this hall, comprising so many names of widest renown in every branch of learning—we might almost say in every field of human endeavor—the first inquiry suggested must be after the object of our meeting. The answer is that our purpose corresponds to the eminence of the assemblage. We aim at nothing less than a survey of the realm of knowledge, as comprehensive as is permitted by the limitations of time and space. The organizers of our congress have honored me with the charge of presenting such preliminary view of its field as may make clear the spirit of our undertaking.
Certain tendencies characteristic of the science of our day clearly suggest the direction of our thoughts most appropriate to the occasion. Among the strongest of these is one towards laying greater stress on questions of the beginnings of things, and regarding a knowledge of the laws of development of any object of study as necessary to the understanding of its present form. It may be conceded that the principle here involved is as applicable in the broad field before us as in a special research into the properties of the minutest organism. It therefore seems meet that we should begin by inquiring what agency has brought about the remarkable development of science to which the world of to-day bears witness. This view is recognized in the plan of our proceedings by providing for each great department of knowledge a review of its progress during the century that has elapsed since the great event commemorated by the scenes outside this hall. But such reviews do not make up that general survey of science at large which is necessary to the development of our theme, and which must include the action of causes that had their origin long before our time. The movement which culminated in making the nineteenth century ever memorable in history is the outcome of a long series of causes, acting through many centuries, which are worthy of especial attention on such an occasion as this. In setting them forth we should avoid laying stress on those visible manifestations which, striking the eye of every beholder, are in no danger of being overlooked, and search rather for those agencies whose activities underlie the whole visible scene, but which are liable to be blotted out of sight by the very brilliancy of the results to which they have given rise. It is easy to draw attention to the wonderful qualities of the oak; but, from that very fact, it may be needful to point out that the real wonder lies concealed in the acorn from which it grew.
Our inquiry into the logical order of the causes which have made our civilization what it is to-day will be facilitated by bringing to mind certain elementary considerations—ideas so familiar that setting them forth may seem like citing a body of truisms—and yet so frequently overlooked, not only individually, but in their relation to each other, that the conclusion to which they lead may be lost to sight. One of these propositions is that psychical rather than material causes are those which we should regard as fundamental in directing the development of the social organism. The human intellect is the really active agent in every branch of endeavor—the primum mobile of civilization—and all those material manifestations to which our attention is so often directed are to be regarded as secondary to this first agency. If it be true that "in the world is nothing great but man; in man is nothing great but mind," then should the key-note of our discourse be the recognition of this first and greatest of powers.
Another well-known fact is that those applications of the forces of nature to the promotion of human welfare which have made our age what it is are of such comparatively recent origin that we need go back only a single century to antedate their most important features, and scarcely more than four centuries to find their beginning. It follows that the subject of our inquiry should be the commencement, not many centuries ago, of a certain new form of intellectual activity.
Having gained this point of view, our next inquiry will be into the nature of that activity and its relation to the stages of progress which preceded and followed its beginning. The superficial observer, who sees the oak but forgets the acorn, might tell us that the special qualities which have brought out such great results are expert scientific knowledge and rare ingenuity, directed to the application of the powers of steam and electricity. From this point of view the great inventors and the great captains of industry were the first agents in bringing about the modern era. But the more careful inquirer will see that the work of these men was possible only through a knowledge of the laws of nature, which had been gained by men whose work took precedence of theirs in logical order, and that success in invention has been measured by completeness in such knowledge. While giving all due honor to the great inventors, let us remember that the first place is that of the great investigators, whose forceful intellects opened the way to secrets previously hidden from men. Let it be an honor and not a reproach to these men that they were not actuated by the love of gain, and did not keep utilitarian ends in view in the pursuit of their researches. If it seems that in neglecting such ends they were leaving undone the most important part of their work, let us remember that Nature turns a forbidding face to those who pay her court with the hope of gain, and is responsive only to those suitors whose love for her is pure and undefiled. Not only is the special genius required in the investigator not that generally best adapted to applying the discoveries which he makes, but the result of his having sordid ends in view would be to narrow the field of his efforts, and exercise a depressing effect upon his activities. The true man of science has no such expression in his vocabulary as "useful knowledge." His domain is as wide as nature itself, and he best fulfils his mission when he leaves to others the task of applying the knowledge he gives to the world.
We have here the explanation of the well-known fact that the functions of the investigator of the laws of nature, and of the inventor who applies these laws to utilitarian purposes, are rarely united in the same person. If the one conspicuous exception which the past century presents to this rule is not unique, we should probably have to go back to Watt to find another.
From this view-point it is clear that the primary agent in the movement which has elevated man to the masterful position he now occupies is the scientific investigator. He it is whose work has deprived plague and pestilence of their terrors, alleviated human suffering, girdled the earth with the electric wire, bound the continent with the iron way, and made neighbors of the most distant nations. As the first agent which has made possible this meeting of his representatives, let his evolution be this day our worthy theme. As we follow the evolution of an organism by studying the stages of its growth, so we have to show how the work of the scientific investigator is related to the ineffectual efforts of his predecessors.
In our time we think of the process of development in nature as one going continuously forward through the combination of the opposite processes of evolution and dissolution. The tendency of our thought has been in the direction of banishing cataclysms to the theological limbo, and viewing Nature as a sleepless plodder, endowed with infinite patience, waiting through long ages for results. I do not contest the truth of the principle of continuity on which this view is based. But it fails to make known to us the whole truth. The building of a ship from the time that her keel is laid until she is making her way across the ocean is a slow and gradual process; yet there is a cataclysmic epoch opening up a new era in her history. It is the moment when, after lying for months or years a dead, inert, immovable mass, she is suddenly endowed with the power of motion, and, as if imbued with life, glides into the stream, eager to begin the career for which she was designed.
I think it is thus in the development of humanity. Long ages may pass during which a race, to all external observation, appears to be making no real progress. Additions may be made to learning, and the records of history may constantly grow, but there is nothing in its sphere of thought, or in the features of its life, that can be called essentially new. Yet, Nature may have been all along slowly working in a way which evades our scrutiny, until the result of her operations suddenly appears in a new and revolutionary movement, carrying the race to a higher plane of civilization.
It is not difficult to point out such epochs in human progress. The greatest of all, because it was the first, is one of which we find no record either in written or geological history. It was the epoch when our progenitors first took conscious thought of the morrow, first used the crude weapons which Nature had placed within their reach to kill their prey, first built a fire to warm their bodies and cook their food. I love to fancy that there was some one first man, the Adam of evolution, who did all this, and who used the power thus acquired to show his fellows how they might profit by his example. When the members of the tribe or community which he gathered around him began to conceive of life as a whole—to include yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow in the same mental grasp—to think how they might apply the gifts of Nature to their own uses—a movement was begun which should ultimately lead to civilization.
Long indeed must have been the ages required for the development of this rudest primitive community into the civilization revealed to us by the most ancient tablets of Egypt and Assyria. After spoken language was developed, and after the rude representation of ideas by visible marks drawn to resemble them had long been practised, some Cadmus must have invented an alphabet. When the use of written language was thus introduced, the word of command ceased to be confined to the range of the human voice, and it became possible for master minds to extend their influence as far as a written message could be carried. Then were communities gathered into provinces; provinces into kingdoms, kingdoms into great empires of antiquity. Then arose a stage of civilization which we find pictured in the most ancient records—a stage in which men were governed by laws that were perhaps as wisely adapted to their conditions as our laws are to ours—in which the phenomena of nature were rudely observed, and striking occurrences in the earth or in the heavens recorded in the annals of the nation.
Vast was the progress of knowledge during the interval between these empires and the century in which modern science began. Yet, if I am right in making a distinction between the slow and regular steps of progress, each growing naturally out of that which preceded it, and the entrance of the mind at some fairly definite epoch into an entirely new sphere of activity, it would appear that there was only one such epoch during the entire interval. This was when abstract geometrical reasoning commenced, and astronomical observations aiming at precision were recorded, compared, and discussed. Closely associated with it must have been the construction of the forms of logic. The radical difference between the demonstration of a theorem of geometry and the reasoning of every-day life which the masses of men must have practised from the beginning, and which few even to-day ever get beyond, is so evident at a glance that I need not dwell upon it. The principal feature of this advance is that, by one of those antinomies of human intellect of which examples are not wanting even in our own time, the development of abstract ideas preceded the concrete knowledge of natural phenomena. When we reflect that in the geometry of Euclid the science of space was brought to such logical perfection that even to-day its teachers are not agreed as to the practicability of any great improvement upon it, we cannot avoid the feeling that a very slight change in the direction of the intellectual activity of the Greeks would have led to the beginning of natural science. But it would seem that the very purity and perfection which was aimed at in their system of geometry stood in the way of any extension or application of its methods and spirit to the field of nature. One example of this is worthy of attention. In modern teaching the idea of magnitude as generated by motion is freely introduced. A line is described by a moving point; a plane by a moving line; a solid by a moving plane. It may, at first sight, seem singular that this conception finds no place in the Euclidian system. But we may regard the omission as a mark of logical purity and rigor. Had the real or supposed advantages of introducing motion into geometrical conceptions been suggested to Euclid, we may suppose him to have replied that the theorems of space are independent of time; that the idea of motion necessarily implies time, and that, in consequence, to avail ourselves of it would be to introduce an extraneous element into geometry.
It is quite possible that the contempt of the ancient philosophers for the practical application of their science, which has continued in some form to our own time, and which is not altogether unwholesome, was a powerful factor in the same direction. The result was that, in keeping geometry pure from ideas which did not belong to it, it failed to form what might otherwise have been the basis of physical science. Its founders missed the discovery that methods similar to those of geometric demonstration could be extended into other and wider fields than that of space. Thus not only the development of applied geometry but the reduction of other conceptions to a rigorous mathematical form was indefinitely postponed.
There is, however, one science which admitted of the immediate application of the theorems of geometry, and which did not require the application of the experimental method. Astronomy is necessarily a science of observation pure and simple, in which experiment can have no place except as an auxiliary. The vague accounts of striking celestial phenomena handed down by the priests and astrologers of antiquity were followed in the time of the Greeks by observations having, in form at least, a rude approach to precision, though nothing like the degree of precision that the astronomer of to-day would reach with the naked eye, aided by such instruments as he could fashion from the tools at the command of the ancients.
The rude observations commenced by the Babylonians were continued with gradually improving instruments—first by the Greeks and afterwards by the Arabs—but the results failed to afford any insight into the true relation of the earth to the heavens. What was most remarkable in this failure is that, to take a first step forward which would have led on to success, no more was necessary than a course of abstract thinking vastly easier than that required for working out the problems of geometry. That space is infinite is an unexpressed axiom, tacitly assumed by Euclid and his successors. Combining this with the most elementary consideration of the properties of the triangle, it would be seen that a body of any given size could be placed at such a distance in space as to appear to us like a point. Hence a body as large as our earth, which was known to be a globe from the time that the ancient Phoenicians navigated the Mediterranean, if placed in the heavens at a sufficient distance, would look like a star. The obvious conclusion that the stars might be bodies like our globe, shining either by their own light or by that of the sun, would have been a first step to the understanding of the true system of the world.
There is historic evidence that this deduction did not wholly escape the Greek thinkers. It is true that the critical student will assign little weight to the current belief that the vague theory of Pythagoras—that fire was at the centre of all things—implies a conception of the heliocentric theory of the solar system. But the testimony of Archimedes, confused though it is in form, leaves no serious doubt that Aristarchus of Samos not only propounded the view that the earth revolves both on its own axis and around the sun, but that he correctly removed the great stumbling-block in the way of this theory by adding that the distance of the fixed stars was infinitely greater than the dimensions of the earth's orbit. Even the world of philosophy was not yet ready for this conception, and, so far from seeing the reasonableness of the explanation, we find Ptolemy arguing against the rotation of the earth on grounds which careful observations of the phenomena around him would have shown to be ill-founded.
Physical science, if we can apply that term to an uncoordinated body of facts, was successfully cultivated from the earliest times. Something must have been known of the properties of metals, and the art of extracting them from their ores must have been practised, from the time that coins and medals were first stamped. The properties of the most common compounds were discovered by alchemists in their vain search for the philosopher's stone, but no actual progress worthy of the name rewarded the practitioners of the black art.
Perhaps the first approach to a correct method was that of Archimedes, who by much thinking worked out the law of the lever, reached the conception of the centre of gravity, and demonstrated the first principles of hydrostatics. It is remarkable that he did not extend his researches into the phenomena of motion, whether spontaneous or produced by force. The stationary condition of the human intellect is most strikingly illustrated by the fact that not until the time of Leonardo was any substantial advance made on his discovery. To sum up in one sentence the most characteristic feature of ancient and medieval science, we see a notable contrast between the precision of thought implied in the construction and demonstration of geometrical theorems and the vague indefinite character of the ideas of natural phenomena generally, a contrast which did not disappear until the foundations of modern science began to be laid.
We should miss the most essential point of the difference between medieval and modern learning if we looked upon it as mainly a difference either in the precision or the amount of knowledge. The development of both of these qualities would, under any circumstances, have been slow and gradual, but sure. We can hardly suppose that any one generation, or even any one century, would have seen the complete substitution of exact for inexact ideas. Slowness of growth is as inevitable in the case of knowledge as in that of a growing organism. The most essential point of difference is one of those seemingly slight ones, the importance of which we are too apt to overlook. It was like the drop of blood in the wrong place, which some one has told us makes all the difference between a philosopher and a maniac. It was all the difference between a living tree and a dead one, between an inert mass and a growing organism. The transition of knowledge from the dead to the living form must, in any complete review of the subject, be looked upon as the really great event of modern times. Before this event the intellect was bound down by a scholasticism which regarded knowledge as a rounded whole, the parts of which were written in books and carried in the minds of learned men. The student was taught from the beginning of his work to look upon authority as the foundation of his beliefs. The older the authority the greater the weight it carried. So effective was this teaching that it seems never to have occurred to individual men that they had all the opportunities ever enjoyed by Aristotle of discovering truth, with the added advantage of all his knowledge to begin with. Advanced as was the development of formal logic, that practical logic was wanting which could see that the last of a series of authorities, every one of which rested on those which preceded it, could never form a surer foundation for any doctrine than that supplied by its original propounder.
The result of this view of knowledge was that, although during the fifteen centuries following the death of the geometer of Syracuse great universities were founded at which generations of professors expounded all the learning of their time, neither professor nor student ever suspected what latent possibilities of good were concealed in the most familiar operations of Nature. Every one felt the wind blow, saw water boil, and heard the thunder crash, but never thought of investigating the forces here at play. Up to the middle of the fifteenth century the most acute observer could scarcely have seen the dawn of a new era.
In view of this state of things it must be regarded as one of the most remarkable facts in evolutionary history that four or five men, whose mental constitution was either typical of the new order of things, or who were powerful agents in bringing it about, were all born during the fifteenth century, four of them at least, at so nearly the same time as to be contemporaries.
Leonardo da Vinci, whose artistic genius has charmed succeeding generations, was also the first practical engineer of his time, and the first man after Archimedes to make a substantial advance in developing the laws of motion. That the world was not prepared to make use of his scientific discoveries does not detract from the significance which must attach to the period of his birth.
Shortly after him was born the great navigator whose bold spirit was to make known a new world, thus giving to commercial enterprise that impetus which was so powerful an agent in bringing about a revolution in the thoughts of men.
The birth of Columbus was soon followed by that of Copernicus, the first after Aristarchus to demonstrate the true system of the world. In him more than in any of his contemporaries do we see the struggle between the old forms of thought and the new. It seems almost pathetic and is certainly most suggestive of the general view of knowledge taken at that time that, instead of claiming credit for bringing to light great truths before unknown, he made a labored attempt to show that, after all, there was nothing really new in his system, which he claimed to date from Pythagoras and Philolaus. In this connection it is curious that he makes no mention of Aristarchus, who I think will be regarded by conservative historians as his only demonstrated predecessor. To the hold of the older ideas upon his mind we must attribute the fact that in constructing his system he took great pains to make as little change as possible in ancient conceptions.
Luther, the greatest thought-stirrer of them all, practically of the same generation with Copernicus, Leonardo and Columbus, does not come in as a scientific investigator, but as the great loosener of chains which had so fettered the intellect of men that they dared not think otherwise than as the authorities thought.
Almost coeval with the advent of these intellects was the invention of printing with movable type. Gutenberg was born during the first decade of the century, and his associates and others credited with the invention not many years afterwards. If we accept the principle on which I am basing my argument, that in bringing out the springs of our progress we should assign the first place to the birth of those psychic agencies which started men on new lines of thought, then surely was the fifteenth the wonderful century.
Let us not forget that, in assigning the actors then born to their places, we are not narrating history, but studying a special phase of evolution. It matters not for us that no university invited Leonardo to its halls, and that his science was valued by his contemporaries only as an adjunct to the art of engineering. The great fact still is that he was the first of mankind to propound laws of motion. It is not for anything in Luther's doctrines that he finds a place in our scheme. No matter for us whether they were sound or not. What he did towards the evolution of the scientific investigator was to show by his example that a man might question the best-established and most venerable authority and still live—still preserve his intellectual integrity—still command a hearing from nations and their rulers. It matters not for us whether Columbus ever knew that he had discovered a new continent. His work was to teach that neither hydra, chimera nor abyss—neither divine injunction nor infernal machination—was in the way of men visiting every part of the globe, and that the problem of conquering the world reduced itself to one of sails and rigging, hull and compass. The better part of Copernicus was to direct man to a view-point whence he should see that the heavens were of like matter with the earth. All this done, the acorn was planted from which the oak of our civilization should spring. The mad quest for gold which followed the discovery of Columbus, the questionings which absorbed the attention of the learned, the indignation excited by the seeming vagaries of a Paracelsus, the fear and trembling lest the strange doctrine of Copernicus should undermine the faith of centuries, were all helps to the germination of the seed—stimuli to thought which urged it on to explore the new fields opened up to its occupation. This given, all that has since followed came out in regular order of development, and need be here considered only in those phases having a special relation to the purpose of our present meeting.
So slow was the growth at first that the sixteenth century may scarcely have recognized the inauguration of a new era. Torricelli and Benedetti were of the third generation after Leonardo, and Galileo, the first to make a substantial advance upon his theory, was born more than a century after him. Only two or three men appeared in a generation who, working alone, could make real progress in discovery, and even these could do little in leavening the minds of their fellowmen with the new ideas.
Up to the middle of the seventeenth century an agent which all experience since that time shows to be necessary to the most productive intellectual activity was wanting. This was the attrition of like minds, making suggestions to one another, criticising, comparing, and reasoning. This element was introduced by the organization of the Royal Society of London and the Academy of Sciences of Paris.
The members of these two bodies seem like ingenious youth suddenly thrown into a new world of interesting objects, the purposes and relations of which they had to discover. The novelty of the situation is strikingly shown in the questions which occupied the minds of the incipient investigators. One natural result of British maritime enterprise was that the aspirations of the Fellows of the Royal Society were not confined to any continent or hemisphere. Inquiries were sent all the way to Batavia to know "whether there be a hill in Sumatra which burneth continually, and a fountain which runneth pure balsam." The astronomical precision with which it seemed possible that physiological operations might go on was evinced by the inquiry whether the Indians can so prepare that stupefying herb Datura that "they make it lie several days, months, years, according as they will, in a man's body without doing him any harm, and at the end kill him without missing an hour's time." Of this continent one of the inquiries was whether there be a tree in Mexico that yields water, wine, vinegar, milk, honey, wax, thread and needles.
Among the problems before the Paris Academy of Sciences those of physiology and biology took a prominent place. The distillation of compounds had long been practised, and the fact that the more spirituous elements of certain substances were thus separated naturally led to the question whether the essential essences of life might not be discoverable in the same way. In order that all might participate in the experiments, they were conducted in open session of the academy, thus guarding against the danger of any one member obtaining for his exclusive personal use a possible elixir of life. A wide range of the animal and vegetable kingdom, including cats, dogs and birds of various species, were thus analyzed. The practice of dissection was introduced on a large scale. That of the cadaver of an elephant occupied several sessions, and was of such interest that the monarch himself was a spectator.
To the same epoch with the formation and first work of these two bodies belongs the invention of a mathematical method which in its importance to the advance of exact science may be classed with the invention of the alphabet in its relation to the progress of society at large. The use of algebraic symbols to represent quantities had its origin before the commencement of the new era, and gradually grew into a highly developed form during the first two centuries of that era. But this method could represent quantities only as fixed. It is true that the elasticity inherent in the use of such symbols permitted of their being applied to any and every quantity; yet, in any one application, the quantity was considered as fixed and definite. But most of the magnitudes of nature are in a state of continual variation; indeed, since all motion is variation, the latter is a universal characteristic of all phenomena. No serious advance could be made in the application of algebraic language to the expression of physical phenomena until it could be so extended as to express variation in quantities, as well as the quantities themselves. This extension, worked out independently by Newton and Leibnitz, may be classed as the most fruitful of conceptions in exact science. With it the way was opened for the unimpeded and continually accelerated progress of the last two centuries.
The feature of this period which has the closest relation to the purpose of our coming together is the seemingly unending subdivision of knowledge into specialties, many of which are becoming so minute and so isolated that they seem to have no interest for any but their few pursuers. Happily science itself has afforded a corrective for its own tendency in this direction. The careful thinker will see that in these seemingly diverging branches common elements and common principles are coming more and more to light. There is an increasing recognition of methods of research, and of deduction, which are common to large branches, or to the whole of science. We are more and more recognizing the principle that progress in knowledge implies its reduction to more exact forms, and the expression of its ideas in language more or less mathematical. The problem before the organizers of this Congress was, therefore, to bring the sciences together, and seek for the unity which we believe underlies their infinite diversity.
The assembling of such a body as now fills this hall was scarcely possible in any preceding generation, and is made possible now only through the agency of science itself. It differs from all preceding international meetings by the universality of its scope, which aims to include the whole of knowledge. It is also unique in that none but leaders have been sought out as members. It is unique in that so many lands have delegated their choicest intellects to carry on its work. They come from the country to which our republic is indebted for a third of its territory, including the ground on which we stand; from the land which has taught us that the most scholarly devotion to the languages and learning of the cloistered past is compatible with leadership in the practical application of modern science to the arts of life; from the island whose language and literature have found a new field and a vigorous growth in this region; from the last seat of the holy Roman Empire; from the country which, remembering a monarch who made an astronomical observation at the Greenwich Observatory, has enthroned science in one of the highest places in its government; from the peninsula so learned that we have invited one of its scholars to come and tells us of our own language; from the land which gave birth to Leonardo, Galileo, Torricelli, Columbus, Volta—what an array of immortal names!—from the little republic of glorious history which, breeding men rugged as its eternal snow-peaks, has yet been the seat of scientific investigation since the day of the Bernoullis; from the land whose heroic dwellers did not hesitate to use the ocean itself to protect it against invaders, and which now makes us marvel at the amount of erudition compressed within its little area; from the nation across the Pacific, which, by half a century of unequalled progress in the arts of life, has made an important contribution to evolutionary science through demonstrating the falsity of the theory that the most ancient races are doomed to be left in the rear of the advancing age—in a word, from every great centre of intellectual activity on the globe I see before me eminent representatives of that world—advance in knowledge which we have met to celebrate. May we not confidently hope that the discussions of such an assemblage will prove pregnant of a future for science which shall outshine even its brilliant past.
Gentlemen and scholars all! You do not visit our shores to find great collections in which centuries of humanity have given expression on canvas and in marble to their hopes, fears, and aspirations. Nor do you expect institutions and buildings hoary with age. But as you feel the vigor latent in the fresh air of these expansive prairies, which has collected the products of human genius by which we are here surrounded, and, I may add, brought us together; as you study the institutions which we have founded for the benefit, not only of our own people, but of humanity at large; as you meet the men who, in the short space of one century, have transformed this valley from a savage wilderness into what it is today—then may you find compensation for the want of a past like yours by seeing with prophetic eye a future world-power of which this region shall be the seat. If such is to be the outcome of the institutions Which we are now building up, then may your present visit be a blessing both to your posterity and ours by making that power one for good to all man-kind. Your deliberations will help to demonstrate to us and to the world at large that the reign of law must supplant that of brute force in the relations of the nations, just as it has supplanted it in the relations of individuals. You will help to show that the war which science is now waging against the sources of diseases, pain, and misery offers an even nobler field for the exercise of heroic qualities than can that of battle. We hope that when, after your all too-fleeting sojourn in our midst, you return to your own shores, you will long feel the influence of the new air you have breathed in an infusion of increased vigor in pursuing your varied labors. And if a new impetus is thus given to the great intellectual movement of the past century, resulting not only in promoting the unification of knowledge, but in widening its field through new combinations of effort on the part of its votaries, the projectors, organizers and supporters of this Congress of Arts and Science will be justified of their labors.