The foremost men in all the societies, our leaders in the branches represented there, owe it to themselves, owe it much more to the great name of American science, to maintain and magnify their connection with, their service to, the American Association.
At the second meeting of the association it was the illustrious Joseph Henry who called the attention of his brethren to the fact that the organization was, by its very name, consecrated to the _advancement_ of science--to the discovery of new truth. He reminded them that the association was not designed to furnish opportunity for the restatement of what was already known. Its purpose was rather to add to the existing body of knowledge in the world. Let not the hopes of the founders be brought to naught by allowing the organization from which they expected so much to be thus eviscerated!
We see, then, that the _social feature_, with what it legitimately includes, deserves to hold as prominent a place among the objects of the association at the end of the century as was given to it by its founders when first established.
Two other objects which were deemed worthy of being incorporated into the organic law of the association remain to be considered. To the treatment of each a few words will be devoted. Neither of them commands as high regard from us as they seem to have had at the beginning.
2. The second object of the association as declared by the founders was "to give a stronger and more general impulse and a more systematic direction to scientific research in our country."
It is not easy for those who were born after the middle point of the century to think themselves back into the conditions under which the words above quoted were written. At that time there were but two or three schools of science in the United States, and not one west of the seaboard. The degrees of bachelor, master, and doctor of science were unknown. There was but one journal of science published in the country, and foreign scientific journals and reviews, comparatively weak and few at the best, seldom found their way to the New World. The men who cultivated science were widely separated, and for the most part rarely met their peers. As a natural consequence, there must have been more or less misdirected effort. Many a worker must have attacked problems already solved, or have attacked them by inadequate or obsolete methods.