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 heavens, it appeared to me that
an appropriate and interesting subject might be the present and
future problems of astronomy.
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