egnant 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.

XVII

THE EVOLUTION OF ASTRONOMICAL KNOWLEDGE

[Footnote: Address at the dedication of the Flower Observatory,
University of Pennsylvania, May 12, 1897--Science, May 21, 1897]

Assembled, as we are, to dedicate a new institution to the promotion of
our knowledge of the heav