"If you cannot discover the known from the unknown you can at least, like the newly discovered elements, Niton, Thorium, and Actinium, excite activity in others. We must refuse to acknowledge defeat. I do not ask you to waste your precious time in fruitless efforts to win the Wolfskehl prize of 125,000 frs. by attempting to find a positive solution of Fermat's great theorem, that x^n + y^n = z^n[23]. You, gentlemen, can well afford to leave such investigations to the German professors and the students of Göttingen. We Frenchmen have no time for such speculations, so long as rich pastures of fruitful and practical facts await discovery on every hand. Organic chemistry is only beginning to be unfolded and treated mathematically. We know the laws of gravity, but what is the cause of it? How does one body attract another at a distance, with nothing but the invisible and intangible Ether between them? The questions asked by Hypatia, the daughter of Theon, the geometer of Alexandria, fifteen hundred years ago, 'Who am I, what am I, whence do I go, and what is the soul of man?' remain unanswered to-day. If you study the smallest object, or the meanest insect, you cannot help making important discoveries, if you only go about it in the right way. The fields are already white unto the harvest and the labourers are few. If we would spend our lives like men we must work as long as our frail bodies will hold out. Do not let us be put to shame by the tiny insects. Look at the Megachile, the Anthidium, the Halictes and the wild bee Chalcidoma who, as our illustrious naturalist Henri Fabre informed us, work for the very joy of it, until they drop dead from sheer fatigue. So eager are they, that they even allow themselves to be killed rather than give up their work. It is not our business to read history, rather let it be our task to make it. (Deafening applause). I am merely a pioneer in the field of science, (cries of 'No, no'). I have just peeped behind the veil which screens our view from the unknown beyond. It remains for you to tear that veil asunder. Truly it has been said 'Labore est orare.' Let us then work until we die, and when our work is finished: "O, may we join the choir invisible, Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence: live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues. "Gentlemen," he added, "I have one thing to say before I sit down. My illness has not been without its compensations, for it has been the means of my winning a lovely bride," and he pointed to Renée, who became suffused with blushes. The rest of his remarks were drowned by terrific applause, intermingled with shouts of "Delapine for ever," "Three cheers for the bride," "Good old Delapine," during which the professor sat down.