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. I