ADVERTISEMENT.

The object of the GENERAL APPENDIX to the Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution is to furnish brief accounts of scientific discovery in particular directions; reports of investigations made by collaborators of the Institution; and memoirs of a general character or on special topics that are of interest or value to the numerous correspondents of the Institution.

It has been a prominent object of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, from a very early date, to enrich the annual report required of them by law with memoirs illustrating the more remarkable and important developments in physical and biological discovery, as well as showing the general character of the operations of the Institution; and this purpose has, during the greater part of its history, been carried out largely by the publication of such papers as would possess an interest to all attracted by scientific progress.

In 1880 the secretary, induced in part by the discontinuance of an annual summary of progress which for 30 years previous had been issued by well-known private publishing firms, had prepared by competent collaborators a series of abstracts, showing concisely the prominent features of recent scientific progress in astronomy, geology, meteorology, physics, chemistry, mineralogy, botany, zoology, and anthropology. This latter plan was continued, though not altogether satisfactorily, down to and including the year 1888.

In the report for 1889 a return was made to the earlier method of presenting a miscellaneous selection of papers (some of them original) embracing a considerable range of scientific investigation and discussion. This method has been continued in the present report for 1921.

137

THE DAILY INFLUENCES OF ASTRONOMY.1

By W. W. CAMPBELL,

Lick Observatory, University of California.

In the great struggle through which the principal nations have. passed, men and women at home labored intensively to maintain their ideals; countless millions of men fought valiantly and many millions died for the ideals of their nations. Quick results, short cuts to the end in view, the achieving of victory regardless of costs, were the order of the day. Suddenly the problems of war gave way to the problems of peace. The intensive methods of war carried over to an unfortunate degree into the days of peace. Human energy, mobilized in behalf of the nation, applied unselfishly for the good of every person in the nation, for the well-being of all the nations, was diverted in regrettable measure to promoting selfish interests. The moral exaltation of the war period was replaced in too many cases by the selfishness of individuals and organizations; by profiteering a new word, coined to describe widespread conditions. The struggle in Russia, as the extreme case, is direct action for the sudden attainment of certain results, without due consideration for the rights of others. In all countries there are those who, seeing conditions not to their liking, in commerce, in education, in religion, in many phases of daily life, would cut and slash their way through the good, in order to uproot what, in their sight, is bad. This spirit exists in America, and throughout the world, in various degrees. Disturbances in the body politic may ensue for years or a generation by virtue of these attempted short cuts to results, but radical transformations in the social structure of the great modern nations, to endure, must find the people ready for them. The influences which prepare the way for desirable and enduring reforms are not those applied suddenly, but such as operate day and night, continuously, through long periods of time. The revolutions in Russia, in Mexico, in many parts of Latin America attract our attention, but the really serious misfortunes of those lands lie much deeper, in their bad

'Address on the occasion of the dedication of the Warner and Swasey Observatory, Case School of Applied Science, Cleveland, on October 12, 1920. Reprinted by permission from Science, December 10, 1920.

social, educational, economic conditions, which are operating unfavorably upon their civilizations every day of the year.

We may well inquire what it is that bears a nation onward and upward to greater things. It is unquestionably the spirit of idealism radiating from its various activities. It is the idealism in commercial life: that part of every man's affairs which is conducted with full respect for the rights of others; that part of every man's business which would not, through its publication, injure his good name. It is the idealism of the transportation system, which interchanges commodities to mutual advantage, and acquaints one section of the world with the good things of other sections. It is idealism in banking, in farming, in the honest day's labor at an honest wage. It is idealism in the intellectual life: reverence for the truth, a desire to know the truth, and to live in harmony with the truth in one's surroundings.

A pessimist would to-day, as always, receive short shrift, yet I venture to say the world was perhaps never more urgently in need of the biblical advice, "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." This expression of great wisdom has never been surpassed as a statement of the principles which govern men of science in their search for the truth.

The chief value of scientific method and accurate knowledge lies not in their worship by the intellectual few, not in their applications to industry, but in their influence upon the daily life of the people. The remarkable advance in civilization within the leading nations in recent centuries has been due to the daily and hourly influence of the scientific spirit, more than to any other element. Those nations which possess it are forging ahead by leaps and bounds, and those which do not are dropping out of the race. The unscientific nations are threatened with absorption by their more scientific neighbors, not so much because they do not invent or perfect the most powerful cannon, the sturdiest dreadnaught, the speediest airplane, or the subtlest submarine, but because the scientific nations are forging ahead of them in the arts of peace, in the modes of thought, in the affairs of daily life. The unscientific nations are without serious influence in the world, not because they are unwarlike-the Turks and essentially all Mohammedans are warlike enough to suit everybody-but because they are lacking in the vision and the efficiency which accompany the scientific spirit."

History affords no more remarkable phenomenon than the retrograde movement in civilization which began with the decline of the Roman power and continued through more than a thousand years.

2 This and the following paragraph have been taken, with but few changes, from one of my earlier addresses.-W. W. C.

There had once existed a wonderful Greek civilization, but for twelve or fifteen centuries it was so nearly suppressed as to be without serious influence upon the life of the European peoples. Greek literature, one of the world's priceless possessions, not surpassed by the best modern literatures, was as complete two thousand years ago as it is to-day. Yet in the Middle Ages, if we except a few scattered churchmen, it was lost to the European world. A Greek science never existed. Now and then, it is true, a Greek philosopher taught that the earth is round, or that the earth revolves around the sun, or speculated upon the constitution of matter; but excepting the geometry of Euclid and Archimedes, we may say that nothing was proved, and that no serious efforts were made to obtain proofs. There could be no scientific spirit in the Greek nation and Greek civilization so long as the Greek religion lived, and the Greek people and government consulted and were guided by the oracles. If there had been a Greek science equal in merit to modern science, think you that stupidity and superstition could have secured a stranglehold upon Greek civilization and have maintained a thousand years of ignorance and mental degradation? Intellectual life could not prosper in Europe so long as dogma in Italy, only three hundred years ago, in the days of Bruno and Galileo, was able to say, "Animals which move have limbs and muscles; the earth has no limbs or muscles, therefore it does not move;" or as long as dogma in Massachusetts, only 250 years ago, was able to hang by the neck until dead the woman whom it charged with "giving a look toward the great meeting house of Salem, and immediately a demon entered the house and tore down a part of the wainscoting." The morals and the intellect of the world had reached a deplorable state at the epoch of the Borgias. It was the re-birth of science, chiefly of astronomy, as exemplified by the work of Columbus and Copernicus, and secondly the growth of medical science, which gave to the people of Europe the power to dispel gradually the unthinkable conditions of the Middle Ages.

It has been said that we may judge of the degree of civilization of a nation by the provision which the people of the nation have made for the study of astronomy. A review of present-day nations is convincing that the statement represents the approximate truth. It is essentially true even of sections of our own country. In our first years as a nation a few small telescopes were in private hands, here and there; they were used merely for occasional looking at the stars; there were no observatories in the United States-no telescopes suitably mounted and housed for the serious study of the stars. The founding of the third American observatory, at Hudson, Ohio, about 1839, only a year or two after the completion of the second observa