UNSOLVED PROBLEMS OF SCIENCE. 33 



sixth was killed by alcohol. You have learned how our hospitals 

 for the insane are filled and how men are led to violence from 

 Dr. Speyr's lecture, and you recall scenes of coarseness you have 

 yourselves seen as the result of alcohol. You will see that a 

 chain of coarseness is drawn about our whole life, which binds us 

 fast on a plane of barbarity and wretchedness. Follow this chain 

 even to yourselves. It is wound about you. . . . That here one 

 dies of delirium tremens, there one loses his senses through alco- 

 hol, there a deed of violence is done, here a brutality perpetrated 

 these are all manifestations of a single great phenomenon, the 

 bondage of mankind to a plane of rudeness in which they deaden 

 and make useless the most precious instrument which is given 

 them for their development ; and you are sharers in the guilt so 

 long as you do not break this chain, so long as you do not have 

 courage to adjust your life-compass with reference to the future 

 instead of the past. 



This is the joy of the one who does not drink the feeling of 

 freedom from responsibility for misery, the joy of hope for the 

 future of mankind, the increased sensitiveness to the beauty of 

 the world ; and on us, the chosen people, rest the hopes of the 

 world for the future. We must be leaders. 



UNSOLVED PROBLEMS OF SCIENCE.* 



By the Most Hon. the MAEQUIS OF SALISBUKY, K. G., D. C. L., F. E. S., 



CHANCELLOK OF THE UNIVEESITY OF OXFORD. 



MY functions are of a more complicated character than usu- 

 ally is assigned to the occupants of this chair. As Chan- 

 cellor of the University it is my duty to tender to the British 

 Association a hearty welcome, which it is my duty as President 

 of the Association to accept. As President of the Association I 

 convey, most unworthily, the voice of English science, as many 

 worthy and illustrious presidents have done before me; but in 

 representing the university I represent far more fittingly the 

 learners who are longing to hear the lessons which the first 

 teachers of Englisk science have come as visitors to teach. I am 

 bound to express on behalf of the university our sense of the good 

 feeling toward that body which is the motive of this unusual 

 arrangement ; but, as far as I am personally concerned, it is 

 attended with some embarrassing results. In presence of the 

 high priests of science I am only a layman, and all the skill of 



* Inaugural Address of the President of the British Association for the Advancement 

 of Science. 



VOL, XLVI. 3 



