s 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 pr