Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/16

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

rations for the work of the congress. Responses followed by the honorary vice-presidents. England was represented, in the absence of Mr. Bryce, by Sir William Ramsay, K.C.B., professor in the Royal Institution of London, who stands in the forefront among inorganic chemists, distinguished by his discovery of argon and several other new chemical elements. M. Gaston Darboux, perpetual secretary of the Paris Academy of Sciences, one of the most original and profound inquirers in the field of modern geometry, spoke for France in the French language. Germany's spokesman was the venerable and venerated anatomist, the eminent Professor Wilhelm Waldeyer of the University of Berlin, who spoke in the language in which he has addressed two generations of medical students who have become leaders in the science of their profession. Dr. Oskar Backlund, director of the Russian Observatory at Pulkowa, which he has made famous by his celebrated astronomical measurements, expressed the greetings of Russia in English. Professor Theodor Escherich, the renowned Viennese pediatrician, spoke in German on behalf of Austria. Senior Attilio Brunialti, member of parliament and councilor of state at Borne, eminent student of constitutional law, which he came to discuss before the congress under the department of jurisprudence, after a few preliminary words in English, broke into his own familiar tongue in order, as he explained, to do justice to the feelings by which he was moved. The demonstrative enthusiasm of his expression was reciprocated by the hearty applause of the audience. In this succession of striking addresses by eminent personages, so individual and at the same time so representative, the keynote of the congress was struck and the spirit which animated the whole was quickly caught.

The scientific part of the program was then set going by the introductory address of the president of the congress, Professor Newcomb, who sketched in a scholarly and illuminating manner the evolution of the scientific investigator, who must be regarded as 'the primary agent in the movement which has elevated man to the masterful position he now occupies.' The common motives of all research and the vital significance of all truth for civilization and human welfare, as brought out in this address, seemed at once to suggest and to justify the universal scope and synthetic purpose of the congress, which was to comprehend not only all the branches of theoretic knowledge, but their several applications to the arts of life.

On Tuesday morning the seven grand divisions of the congress convened simultaneously, each division being addressed by an American scholar, chosen because of a conspicuous breadth of grasp in a wide domain of inquiry and an authoritative appreciation of its inner unity.

Thus normative science, inclusive of philosophy and mathematics in their entirety, was discussed by Professor Josiah Royce of Harvard University, America's foremost representative of speculative philosophy, unrivaled in systematic and constructive learning, unexceled in subtlety