448 the president's address. 



to realise in their entirety as the macrocosm or great universe 

 itself. We find further that each human body, itself appearing 

 as a single individual or unit, is in reality made up of many 

 billions of living units or cells, each as much a microcosm as the 

 whole body. And thus our instrument, the microscope, brings us 

 face to face with the greatest mystery in the whole range of the 

 sciences, namely, the problem of life and living matter. There 

 is, apparently, no gap in nature so profound as that which 

 separates the living from the not-living. The nature of life, its 

 origin and destiny, the laws that govern living matter and vital 

 processes of all kinds ; these are of all problems not merely the 

 most fundamental in science and philosophy, but also the most 

 important for our practical knowledge and daily conduct. 



It would be futile to assert that human science has as yet 

 made any great advance in elucidating the nature of life. On 

 the contrary, all progress in research only throws into greater 

 relief the difficulty of the problem ; the better we become ac- 

 quainted with it, the more the mystery deepens. Nor would it 

 be right to assert that the microscope is the sole instrument 

 of research in this field. Our knowledge of the properties and 

 activities of the living substance and of living things advances 

 daily by leaps and bounds through methods of investigation 

 in which the microscope plays no part. I have referred to the 

 knowledge that has been gained of the life-history of the parasite 

 of yellow fever, in spite of the fact that the microscope has failed 

 completely, so far, to detect the parasite itself. But we may 

 safely claim that the greater and most important part of modern 

 biological knowledge could not have been gained without the 

 instrument which it is the object and purpose of our Club to study, 

 to perfect, and to apply ; and, further, that to be able to see the 

 objects with our own eyes makes them much more real and true 

 to us than merely to infer their presence and properties from 

 experiments in the dark, so to speak. " Seeing is believing : ' is 

 an English proverb which has its counterpart in all languages. 

 We may be satisfied in our minds as to the existence and 

 behaviour of the yellow-fever parasite, but nevertheless its dis- 

 covery by optical means would be greatly welcomed as. an 

 important advance in our knowledge. 



There is no greater stimulant to the all-important study of 

 living things than the feeling of wonder and delight which the 



