To sum up the whole matter, the engineer, either as an individual or as a collective type, is simply a link in the chain of human progress—a chain the links of which, in one form or another, run back into a past removed from our own time by tens of thousands of years, to go to no higher figures. With the trend of human progress as it now is, he seems, moreover, to be a very necessary link. He has taken upon himself the peculiar function of developing and translating into use for the needs of civilization the constructive materials of the earth and the inorganic energies of nature, and in connection with the exercise of such function he has acquired peculiar and weighty duties and responsibilities.